Modern House vs Modern Duplex

Battle of the Boxes

When investing in non-nanopod housing, there are two standout options as of current level cap: the Modern House and the Modern Duplex.

The Modern Duplex is the common go-to option, being cheaper per population on both Gold and Tier 2 resources. It also takes up less space per population.

On the other hand, Modern Houses look to be the superior option for those wishing to maximize their income. It provides a slight benefit over Duplexes in terms of XP/Pop/Hour and Gold/Pop/Hour and is more convenient when converting to Suburbans as both give 4 population.

Both will be replaced in the future by the Suburban House, the best non-nanopod house for XP and Gold income.

House Stats

Modern House

	Level
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Marginal Cost Gold	8,000	25	80	250	1,000	2,000	4,000	8,000	12,000	18,000
Gold Income	275	413	550	688	825	963	1,100	1,238	1,375	1,513
XP Income	28	42	55	69	83	97	110	124	138	152
Total Cost	8,000	8,025	8,105	8,355	9,355	11,355	15,355	23,355	35,355	53,355
Days to Break Even	29.1	19.4	14.7	12.1	11.3	11.8	14	18.9	25.7	35.3

Modern Duplex

	Level
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Marginal Cost Gold	15,000	25	80	250	1,000	2,000	4,000	8,000	12,000	18,000
Gold Income	548	822	1,095	1,369	1,643	1,917	2,190	2,464	2,738	3,012
XP Income	54	81	108	135	162	189	216	243	270	297
Total Cost	15,000	15,025	15,105	15,355	16,355	18,355	22,355	30,355	42,355	60,355
Days to Break Even	27.4	18.3	13.8	11.2	10	9.6	10.2	12.3	15.5	20

Suburban House

	Level
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Marginal Cost Gold	24,000	30	100	285	1,150	2,300	4,600	9,200	13,800	20,700
Gold Income	450	675	900	1,125	1,350	1,575	1,800	2,025	2,250	2,475
XP Income	130	195	260	325	390	455	520	585	650	715
Total Cost	24,000	24,030	24,130	24,415	25,565	27,865	32,465	41,665	55,465	76,165
Days to Break Even (2 Collects)	26.7	17.8	13.4	10.9	9.5	8.8	9	10.3	12.3	15.4

For this analysis, Modern Houses and Duplexes are collected once a day, and Suburbans twice a day.

Decoration bonuses will not be taken into account as they are not functional as of writing.

Modern Houses for Gold Income

Requiring double the Modern Houses compared to Duplexes may appear to be a minor difference, but because you can only upgrade one building at a time, this is a serious downside. This section will ignore this issue entirely and start both houses at Level 10.

In this comparison, there are two Modern Houses and a single Modern Duplex. All houses are Level 10.

Stat	2 Modern Houses	1 Modern Duplex	MH increase over MD
Gold Income	3,026	3,012	0.46%
XP Income	304	297	2.36%
Gold Cost	106,710	60,355	76.80%

The day at which Modern Houses surpass Duplexes in Gold profit is the x value of the intersection point of the lines \(y=3026x-106,710\) and \(y=3012x-60,355\).

The intersection point is \((3311.1, 9912592.1)\). This means that Modern Houses surpass Duplexes on day 3,311.

At the same population, the time it takes for Modern Houses to match the net Gold profit of Modern Duplexes is 3,311.1 days. The original Battle Nations didn’t even last 9 years, so you should build Duplexes if you care about Gold.

In the impossible assumption where the upgrade limit is irrelevant, Modern Houses still perform terribly compared to Duplexes when it comes to Gold income. Modern Houses cost 77% more per population and then need to make up this deficit with their abysmal 0.46% advantage in Gold/Pop/Hour.

At 288 population of houses (Lv 49 with Lv 3 Permits office is 290 population), Modern Houses cost around 1.8 million more Gold than Duplexes.

Modern House for XP Only

Because neither house requires XP to build, Modern Houses should be superior for XP. This is both true and false, depending on when prestige is implemented and when you are building.

As mentioned earlier, a key issue is that twice the number of Modern Houses are required, yet they can only be upgraded one at a time. As a result, you can get a maxed set of Duplexes far faster than a max set of Modern Houses. The Duplexes start generating their full Lv 10 income earlier than Modern Houses, increasing the amount Modern Houses need to match Duplexes further.

Using a program to simulate the building, upgrading, and accumulation of resources, the practical gap between Duplexes and Modern Houses can be shown.

Simulation Details

Simulation Rules

• Two Modern Houses are built a day and a single Modern Duplex is built per day.
• The target is 288 population, meaning 36 Duplexes or 72 Modern Houses. (Lv 49 with Lv 3 Permits office is 290 population)
• Every day, one house is upgraded from Lv 1 to Lv 8, or from Lv 8 to Lv 10.
• Houses under construction cannot be upgraded.
• The simulation ends when all houses are Level 10.

Simulation Notes

• Houses generate income when they finish construction (the moment construction finishes), rather than needing to wait a full cycle to collect.
• Collection timer continues to tick as upgrades are happening. This is accurate to the game.

Results

Modern Houses finish at Day 145, while Modern Duplexes finish at Day 73.

Stat	Modern House	Modern Duplex
Total Gold Earned	10,661,220	5,110,632
Total XP Earned	1,069,632	503,982
Profit at Completion	6,819,660	2,937,852
Profit at Day 145	6,819,660	10,744,956
Total XP at Day 145	1,069,632	1,273,806

From Day 145 onwards, both groups will be producing resources at their maximum rates. The time required for Modern Houses to catch Duplexes is shown below.

Resource	Days Needed
Gold	7933 (21.7 years)
XP	945

The Gold gap is comically large and it further reinforces that it is a terrible idea to build Modern Houses for Gold.

However, if you only care about XP, Modern Houses may have their use. As we are currently capped at Level 49 without prestige, the XP lead from Duplexes being faster is irrelevant as XP does nothing. If you can stomach the extra 1.8 million Gold and extra resources in construction cost, subsequent Gold deficit, and the setup won’t cause wasted XP, Modern Houses will provide a small advantage when prestige is released.

Converting to Suburbans

Modern Houses are superior to Duplexes when it comes to converting to Suburban Houses. As Suburbans require 10 Prestige Stars to build and you only get 15 Stars per prestige, Modern Houses and Suburbans being 4 pop is incredibly convenient. With Duplexes, one must build a temporary Camp until the next prestige, losing out on XP. Modern Houses also naturally have a greater XP/Pop/Hour when compared to Duplexes.

Let's see how much of a difference these advantages make in practice.

Using a program, the time required to convert all houses to Level 10 Suburbans can be found. Several tiers of daily demand satisfaction will be tested: 0%, 25%, 50%, and 75%.

Simulation Details

Simulation Rules:

• The target is 352 population, meaning 44 Duplexes or 88 Modern Houses. (Lv 60 with Lv 3 Permits office is 350 population)
• Prestige is 200,000 XP and gives 15 stars. Suburbans cost 10 stars.
• If a Suburban cannot be built because of population cap, a MH or MD will be sold.
• Every day, one house is upgraded from Lv 1 to Lv 8, or from Lv 8 to Lv 10.
• Houses under construction cannot be upgraded.
• The simulation ends when the population from Suburbans equals 352 (Any level Suburbans count).
• Camp income is not considered.
• 0%, 25%, 50%, and 75% demand corresponds to 0 XP, 11,951 XP, 23,901 XP, and 35,852 XP per day from shops. (Lv 60 Demand cap, no spice)

Results

Demand Met	Days Required	XP from Sold House per Day	XP from All Houses per Day	Total XP per Day	Days per Prestige
0%	250	9,157.09	47,651.13	47,651.13	4.24
25%	187	8,624.98	51,380.39	63,331.39	3.17
50%	154	8,272.16	53,332.35	77,233.35	2.61
75%	132	8,060.61	53,930.91	89,782.91	2.24

Demand Met	Days Required	XP from Sold House per Day	XP from All Houses per Day	Total XP per Day	Days per Prestige
0%	252	8,915.89	47,047.68	47,047.68	4.27
25%	188	8,357.07	51,060.69	63,011.69	3.19
50%	154	8,036.36	52,913.37	76,814.37	2.61
75%	133	7,759.96	53,960.79	89,812.79	2.25

The difference between Modern Houses and Duplexes is at most 2 days and as little as zero. While the difference of ~250 XP a day is somewhat significant when looking solely at the Sold House income, in the context of All Houses or even Total XP, it is miniscule.

Demand Met	Modern House Advantage
0%	0.80%
25%	0.53%
50%	0.00%
75%	0.76%

The advantage of Modern Houses is minimal. If you aren’t running any shops, they are 0.8% faster. The benefit only diminishes from there. Shops will be doing the heavy lifting when pushing the snowball that is Suburban conversion. The Suburban House far surpasses either house and their differences quickly become negligible.

Conclusion

Despite its slight income advantage, the Modern House has several critical factors working against it:

1. It costs 88.4% of a Modern Duplex in Gold to fully upgrade a single Modern House
2. You can only upgrade one building at a time
3. You need two Modern Houses per Duplex

Modern Duplexes are the house to build when optimizing for resource consumption. The benefits Modern Houses provide are far too minimal to justify their extra cost and setup time.

However, if you find yourself with an excess of Lumber and a shortage of Steel (Like when doing Boss Strike repairs or doing promotions), Modern Houses are fine. You'll just be missing out on a bit of Gold.

You can also build Modern Houses if you think they look better. After all, part of Battle Nations is decorating your base, inefficiency be damned.