Making Pubs viable?

[Mr.Eastwood]

Hey guys, I have a quick question about pubs, as you may have guessed.

I was wondering what y'all do to make your pubs economically viable. I have yet been able to errect a pub that wasn't in the red. Is there some sort of boundry where wages have to be X so the pub-price can be Y in order to break even?

[Coconut Kid]

I'm not sure how one would go about computing the relationship of the Pub's wage & price in isolation. That's because of the relationship of wages paid to the customers.

A working estimate is that citizens need entertainment about every six years. If you have more than one kind of entertaiment building, their individual preferences for kind of entertainment come into play. Citizens will not visit an entertainment building which costs more than their current monthly pay.

Note: There is no fancy bookkeeping for the citizens' individual finances, so don't be concerned with the relationship of rent & entertainment cost. The issue is simply a month's pay.

So your Pub management trick is to keep your barmaids' pay as low as possible while setting the price as high as possible without excluding most of the potential customers. You probably need about 150 people paid equal to or more than the Pub's price to keep it occupied.

I'll leave the computation of Barmaid pay + building maintenance to you. A working estimate is that each customer slot should turn-over (new customer) at least three times a year. That means a minimum through-put of 24, or 24 x price is the minimum you should get or you have a problem.

Where your customer base lives is the key. You can improve the through-put (and increase the number in the customer base) by reducing their travel time to the Pub. Remember that a customer will start for the Pub only when there is an open slot, and then will appear in (lock-up) that slot during the travel time - but will start resetting their entertaiment meter only after they arrive. The skill level of the Barmaids will also effect the through-put. So you see, your x/y formula is not quite so easy to compute.

[Rebel-Yell]

I usually build the pub as one of the very first buildings on my island, because it nearly always pays off soon. For a quite long time into the game, I pay a wage of 6$ for all uneduacted, while taking 6$ as fee for guests. Thats most of the time enough to make a decent profit (as long as the pub is fully stuffed) - I have a lot more trouble with the restaurant, if I build one early.

[General Alcazar]

I don't think I have ever had a profit making pub either.      That said I usually set the entrance fee low as if you have other entertainment buildings it doesn't seem to attract that many punters.

My restaurants usually seem to about break even, most others make a loss, even sometimes with a tourist trade.

Is there a strong relationship between the entrance fee for entertainment buildings and the number of visits?       I know it has to be less than 1 months wage, but is there a huge differance in attendance when charging 1/4 months wage compared to say and 3/4?
If not then I think I am keeping my fees unnecessarily low.

[Rebel-Yell]

As long as you don't go beyond the lowest wages you pay, it does not hurt attendance. Or said differently: No Tropican is more likely to visit an entertainment building just because it's cheaper then his monthly wage. So likely your losses come from charging too low fees.

[Coconut Kid]

... Is there a strong relationship between the entrance fee for entertainment buildings and the number of visits? I know it has to be less than 1 months wage, but is there a huge difference in attendance when charging 1/4 months wage compared to say and 3/4?
If not then I think I am keeping my fees unnecessarily low.

BINGO !

The customers for entertainment buildings have several things in mind:

• Their personal 'entertainment' meter has hit the 'red-line'; they have to go! (They are in the "Mode.")
• They scan the island for entertainment buildings ranked by
  • service quality rating,
    • SQR gets a bonus for personal preference
    • (30% for first; 20% for second; 10% for third)
  • dress code,
  • cost,
  • vacant slots and
  • distance
• They "reserve" a vacant slot (their avatar appears in it - there is no queue outside) and start to walk there.

These are not genius financiers planning their investments for retirement or whatever - about every six years they are going to blow a whole month's pay on 'recharging their meter' in the best way possible.

I don't know for sure how they treat the cost other than "go\no go" according to their monthly income. A cost greater than their current monthly pay is a "no go" decision. If their preference involves cheapness, it is relatively low level. The 'dress code' and 'vacant slot' are "go/no go" decisions ('no dress code' allows uneducated; 'dress code' excludes them; there must be a vacant slot).  But how they choose between two side-by-side buildings otherwise equal but with different costs within their monthly pay -- I don't know.

But there are two things I can tell you. First, buildings have a "through-put" rate which has nothing to do with a crowd lining-up outside the door (there is no such thing). Second, unless you are a complete paternalistic savant who has no use for money other than to make the people happy (not even to build better services for them), you would do well to set the costs of entertainment buildings on a basis other than you indicated before.

[Rebel-Yell]

I'll leave the computation of Barmaid pay + building maintenance to you. A working estimate is that each customer slot should turn-over (new customer) at least three times a year. That means a minimum through-put of 24, or 24 x price is the minimum you should get or you have a problem.

Ok, if I understand that correctly, it means that a customer visiting a bar for 4 months will only pay the fee once (8 spaces, each can service three customers per year)...but that would mean OTOH, that when you click on an entertainment building and look at the calculations on the right site, the total number of visitors ("lifetime visits") multiplicated with the fee (assuming you have never changed it) must met the "lifetime income" of that building - however that somehow does not seem to fit for any of my structures. There seems to be always a lot more income. As example I have attached a pic of the Pub in my current game. Until mid of 1989 the fee was 6$, after that 9$...regardless of how many customers were serviced before or after the fee change...how is it possible that they building generated over 18.000$ income when having only 502 visitors over its lifespan? 

[Coconut Kid]

... A working estimate is ...

Ok, if I understand that correctly, it means that a customer visiting a bar for 4 months will only pay the fee once ...

You are correct that a customer pays the fee only once per visit, no matter the length of the visit. See R-Y's later post that the fee is collected at initial entrance and as each calendar month ticks by. This sets-up one of the game's classic conflicts: collecting mutiple fees vs increasing 'thru-put' (which involves dead travel time).

But please note I mentioned a working estimate, that is not a hard and fast rule which takes into account all the variables of the game.

Since you have more income than that crude estimate computes to, that indicates that the estimate needs to be refined and/or your buildings are operating more efficiently because you place them better than the person who formulated that first estimate years ago.

I hope you will pardon me for saying so, but one of the sad & irritating things about German games such as the Anno series is that the out-put / through-put of the buildings is a simplistic mathematical calculation. Only rarely does the population have an impact, and then it is only in gross/total numbers and not as individuals.

In Tropico the 'Pub' customer interacts with the building in terms of the building's employees and their level of experience plus his level of entertainment need as adjusted by his level of interest in 'drinking' in relation to his interest in other forms of entertainment. Further, (as is often forgotten) the customer occupies a slot as soon as he decides to go there even though the satisfaction meter doesn't start to run until he arrives -- so walking time is important. That is not exactly a formula you can check out on a building's statistics, or at least so I think.

I am obligated to mention that there have been random reports of buildings giving effects when the person was walking to them rather than actually present. Specifically - Students gaining education while walking to the school building. I speculate that came from a situation which arose from the shifting of the avatar, and that the education buildings are unique in their effects on persons. So while Student avatars may "learn" while walking to school, 'general' avatars are not 'drinking' while walking to the Pub.

[Rebel-Yell]

Thanks for the explanations, however I'm still wondering what causes that huge income - even if my Pub has been placed better and had a higher through-put because of this (don't think so with 509 visits in around 58 years...), it does not explain why each guest counted left around 36$ per visit. Either the No. of guests is wrong or there is an hidden extra income (maybe the fee collected is only for entering the buildings, while additonal revenue is generated for consumed beverages) I remember having heard such rumors about Casino once (but couldn't believe them), but that would of course not be logical for each entertainment building. Tropico 2 has settings for the Casino (normal setting or per edict either robbing the visitors or taking less from the gametable to increase gambling happiness), but Tropico 1 has no hint on extra incomes...except for that income numbers.

I guess I will examine this a bit more from the beginning, when setting up my next game.

[dierighty]

Were tourists visiting the pub? They provide more income to an entertainment establishment like a pub, because in addition to paying the cover charge to enter the pub, they also pay tips (they tip every month) to the waitresses and barmaids.

[Coconut Kid]

Too soon old,
too late smart!
German proverb.

Were tourists visiting the pub? They provide more income to an entertainment establishment like a pub, because in addition to paying the cover charge to enter the pub, they also pay tips (they tip every month) to the waitresses and barmaids.

Well, that's a new one. I don't know if you are kidding or not. But it's likely a good point however.

The customers/guests at dual 'attractions' & 'entertainment' buildings are comprised of both tourists (for the 'attraction') and citizens (for the 'entertainment'). The working estimates I previously discussed had to do with citizens only.

We think we know quite a bit about how citizens are charged. They pay the building fee once per entry (see previous post) and stay until their "meter' is recharged. That's a contrast with their housing rental which is collected once per month, and pay which is charged once per month.

We don't presume to know as much about tourists. We know they may visit an attraction more than once if, a} there are a lack of places to go (walking distance may be involved), or b} it is high on their preference list (and close-by). Since they are not "recharging a meter", we really don't know how long they stay in an attraction. The length of the stay may be: a fixed number of days; days proportional to the fixed length of their Tropico visit; days proportional to rank on their preference list; a "meter"; or something else altogether.

I think we have all assumed (without painstaking checking of figures - as in Tropicology) that tourists were clipped with the building fee only once per entrance to an attraction. It might be much simplier coding to use a day of the month to charge all tourists their hotel room fee plus the 'attraction' building fee (if any) for their location. If that is the case, it would be impossible to "balance the books" on a building's visitors vs fees collected. It becomes even more confused for a dual use building.

 

[Coconut Kid]

... Either the No. of guests is wrong or there is an hidden extra income ...

I think 'dierightly' has asked a good question. Does your example involve both citizens and tourists?

Perhaps the building fee is charged differently for the categories of citizen and tourist. That is, differently as to time of collection. Date of "entry" might not be the key for both.

The "assumptions" made by most posters here about the building fees collections may be unfounded for one or both of the categories.

The last time someone asked a question like this about balancing the books, we found the duplicate crediting of hotel revenue. What are you getting us into?

 

Then again perhaps the "assumption" about one charge for citizens is wrong. Well, when I'm wrong, I do so in spades.

[Rebel-Yell]

dierighty is right - there were a lot of tourists among the visitors. Thanks for that hint! Nonetheless I plan to do some deeper research on this (maybe I can figure out how the extra-revenue from tourists is calculated)  I have thought of the following setup. First I will start a game with a no-tourist island - and various enteratinment sites - just to be sure that the corrections are always correct in this case. The next setting is an island with tourists and entertainment buildings (ones which the Tropicans could theoretically use as well), but with hindering entrance fees - so no tropican will ever get into those buildings, because there fee will be always at least one dollar above their monthly wage. Luckily, that will also keep many tourists out, so that I can try to examine things with the few remaining tourist visitors.

[Rebel-Yell]

I finally came round to do the planned experiments...and here is what I found out:

(1) Unlike we all thought, both islands inhabitants and tourists pay the fees not once, but per month of staying inside an entertainment buidling    In connection with (2), that explains my questioned findings from the posts above

(2) Visits seem to go for 3 or maybe sometimes rather 4 months (no indications that one visit of a tourist takes longer, but see 4)

(3) The visitors number only counts each visitor at the begin of his 3-moth-visit once

(4) Tourists often make multiple consecutive visits, if no different attractions are available. Each consecutive visit affects the visitor counter.

(5) I found no hint on that tourists pay more than the fee ("hidden tips"). You can easily see this if you charge always 10$ for a tourist-only building, you never get uneven numbers then. If tourists seem to be more profitable, it's just (4) (meaning higher occupancy over time compared to Tropicans)

Edit: Another thing worth to note:

(6) The visitor counter is set higher at the very beginning of a month, while the fees are collected at the very end of each month (thats why in the pics below it is always already the next month, because there is hardly time to pause the game fast enough, unless you play on a really slow speed)

[Rebel-Yell]

Here is the last picture (4-attachment rules prevented me from posting in the post before), showing what happened when the husband of our femal tourist gets sick of visiting the pub after three months...you see the visitor number climbing to a total of 3, while only 10$ more where charged at the end of July.

[Coconut Kid]

@ Rebel-Yell,
Fantanstic Observations !

I think it was generally recognized that people just didn't just "pop-in" and then quickly leave (also with religion & health care), but it is certainly a surprise that the fee is paid everytime the calendar month clicks by.

I think most players had the impression that I did -- the amount of time a visitor spent in a 'service' building was directly related to the speed at which the building & employees recharged the visitor's "need-meter" to full. That's for citizens ; I never thought much about tourists -- I probably assumed they just stayed a fixed period, but rated the building higher for more experienced help.

The huge surprise about your observations is that the game documentation implies at least (if not directly states) that having experienced employees speeds visitors (and other things processed) through. In the case of visitors who pay a fee (entertainment buildings), it doesn't make a difference since they are paying by the month at the end of the month. Even if you could increase efficiency so as to get two in/thru a slot per month, you would collect only one fee. The typical "built-in" conflict of the game. Do you consider that part of the 'charm' of the game?

Additionally, given a three to four month visit -- increasing the "through-put" is not directly a money making effort. It seems to have more to do with keeping more of the population happy, or getting the visitor back to work.

Next to check is the through-put rate of the nightclub. Does the entertainment 'Service Quality' affect the length of visit?

Thanks for looking closely at this.

 

[dierighty]

Analysis leads to two observations that establishes our limited ability to effect tropican entertainment behavior. This is because tropican behavior is based solely on random numbers:

1) A tropican's entertainment need is raised by a random number between 0 and 2 every month.

2) When a tropican visits an entertainment establishment they stay a random amount of time between 10% to 30% of a maximum stay time. The maximum stay time is 40320. The units of this number are not evident to me.

[Coconut Kid]

... The maximum stay time is 40320. The units of this number are not evident to me.

Personally, I would have to speculate that 40230 is "clicks" on the game clock. Somewhere there is a decode of how many "clicks" equal a day. From there we know that the game uses a semi-standard calendar -- 30 days to a month, 12 months to a year. 40230 "clicks" equals several months.

The building quality and the average experience of the employees in theory shorten the 40230 maximum.

This has to be a fairly simple algorithm to run on the relatively primitive machines the game was written for.

[dierighty]

entertainment need gets immediately reset to 0, when the tropican leaves the establishment. Its behavior is different
then resting at home where the tropican's bar is recharged.
When a tropican's entertainment is greater than 80%, they will seek entertainment at the next opportunity. However this entertainment need competes with the other needs that are show on the overview page.

Here is the order of precedence of a Tropican's needs(higher on the order will be handled by the tropican first):
1. Rest //trumps everything
2. buy groceries
3. go to hospital
4. go to pub
5. go to church

If we can manipulate how fast a tropican's entertainment need goes up then they will make more frequent entertainment
trips, possibly to the point where entertainment establishments can provide ample revenues to sustain the island economy.

[Coconut Kid]

... If we can manipulate how fast a tropican's entertainment need goes up then they will make more frequent entertainment trips, ...

Unfortunately I have never developed any skill as a script writer.

The documentation on the "Editor Effects" available to script writers lists 40 effects which may be used to manipulate units. Of those, five seem to make available the means to manipulate as you suggest.

• UnitUIEntertainmentNeed
• UnitUIHealthNeed
• UnitUIHunger
• UnitUIReligiousNeed
• UnitUIRestNeed

.
These script operators can be used to adjust the game engine standard plus or minus; whether by reset to a whole number 1 thru 10 or by a %, I don't know. An elaborate script might be able to apply the adjustment by UnitType and/or UnitAge with nested loops.

Since some Units have to work to keep the economy functional, it would probably be best to develop a "package" of adjustments so as to balance the increased frequency of entertainment need with decreased other time off of work.

[Coconut Kid]

The maximum stay time is 40320.
Speculation on that time unit.

I guess that the number is "clicks" on the game clock. It may even be connected with the "frame rate".

Next I guess that a "game day" equals either 336 or 448 of those "clicks".

A maximum stay in the Pub would be:
>>@ 336: 120 days or four full months.
>>@ 448: 90 days or three full months.

I discovered some information about the length of time a tourist stays on the island.
They stay between 750 to 600 days.

If an attraction stay is 90 or 120 days, and with an allowance for some time in their accomodation, a tourist could visit from five to eight attractions maximum. If the time in their room is significant and a lot of time is spent walking, the numbers would be fewer.

[Coconut Kid]

This was poorly thought out speculation\guess. I have deleted it.

[Coconut Kid]

The Great Crack of
How the 'Units' live!

Entertainment need gets immediately reset to 0, when the tropican leaves the establishment. Its behavior is different
then resting at home where the tropican's [rest] bar is recharged.
When a tropican's entertainment [need] is greater than 80%, they will seek entertainment at the next opportunity. However, this entertainment need competes with the other needs that are shown on the overview page [panel which appears when you click on a citizen].

Here is the order of precedence of a Tropican's needs [as shown on that panel] (higher on the order will be handled by the tropican first):
1. Rest //trumps everything
2. buy groceries
3. go to hospital
4. go to pub
5. go to church

If we can manipulate how fast a tropican's entertainment need goes up then they will make more frequent entertainment trips, possibly to the point where entertainment establishments can provide ample revenues to sustain the island economy.

Here is the first (that I have found) post suggesting how Tropicans exist in simplistic "modes" to satisfy NEEDS which allows a fruitful basis of investigation for understanding how to manipulate them.

Cross reference:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=11451.0

Be warned that the order of what some players will call "desires" as opposed to "essentials" probably have a flexible order rather a fixed order.

[Coconut Kid]

Finally - I think I have connected the dots. I need to state my speculation that we have the tools to estimate the time (perhaps pin it down carefully) that a Tourist will spend in the various attractions and in his\her accommodations because we have their "meters" available. The Tourist's rest meter is on the main\summary panel and a meter for each kind of attraction is on the sixth panel.

Link those with dierighty's and Rebel-Yell's reports, and you can make some new and improved estimates of Tourist activity. And probably some spin-off for citizens.

[Coconut Kid]

I have cleaned up some of my speculations.

It is fairly evident that the number of "clicks" which equal a day is 336.

It also seems clearer that the activities do compete, but under a more complex algorithm.

Rest and Food are life and death - so they trump the others, usually.

Work comes in several categories - so it sometimes trumps or over-rides the others.

The three desire needs trump some Work and compete among them selves. They have defaults which are undesireable.