Demand

Overview
Demand consists of 7 categories: Food, Tools, Meat, Drink, Spices, Goods, and Security. Each of these categories has either one or more associated shops that are unlocked after either reaching a certain level or completing specific quest lines. Players can access the demand window by either clicking on the population icon in the lower right of the screen or by clicking the on the demand specific icon in the upper left of the window where you choose goods from a shop.



The numbers on the left show how many workers the player has devoted to each Demand category (how many people are at work in Farms, Fields, Raptor Ranches, et cetera). The colored bar to the right shows a vague representation of how much Demand there is for each category in your Outpost.

How the Demand Bar Works
The colored bar for each category starts filling from the left to the right (see table below for rates). Each time the player orders a good from a shop the demand bar decreases based on the total XP reward of that job. You will also notice a white line close to the left end of the bar. This white line represents the minimum amount of demand necessary to receive full gold and XP benefits from each good in your shops for that specific category. Each category takes 72 minutes to refill to the white line after being fully depleted.

It is important to note that the gold and XP rewards do NOT increase the higher the demand bar fills. All that matters is that the demand bar is at or above the white line to receive the full rewards.

Below is the complete demand table. At each level, it shows the hourly demand recovery rate and the maximum demand for each category. The hourly rate is currently 1/24 of the maximum for all categories, so that demand will refill completely in one day.

There's also a hidden demand category for Mission jobs. It has a fixed cap of 50,000.

Blue Arrow Goods
A green arrow next to a job represents that demand is at least at or above the white line and you are receiving full gold and XP benefits if you start the job. However, you will notice that usually there is one good that has a blue arrow. This represents an item that is in higher demand, which just means that it is receiving an extra bonus to both gold and XP for a limited period of time.

The time that an item keeps this extra bonus can vary between a minimum of 4 hours and a maximum of 30 hours. The extra bonus can vary between 50% and 150% to both gold and XP.

It is usually recommended to run the job that has the blue arrow, but there are instances in which that may not be correct. See the strategy section for more information on this.

Strategy
This strategy section is aimed for players trying to maximize their XP output. To do this requires multiple check-ins per day as it is important to stagger your production jobs within each demand category.

Understanding How to Use Demand Bar
Two of the most important things to understand are that the demand bar cannot go negative and that it is NOT a bad thing if you get the message that demand has been met. In fact if you are managing demand properly, you should get that message nearly every single time you start a job.

It’s easiest to explain with an example. These are made up numbers to simplify the example. Let’s say a full demand bar has a value of 100, the recovery rate is 10 demand/hour, and the white bar is placed at 10, meaning demand has to be at least 10 to get the full gold and xp. Now let’s say that the 24-hour job uses up 95 of the demand. So if you have a full demand bar it goes from 100 to 5 and demand is met because it is below 10. You will receive the demand has been met message, but will still receive the full gold and XP rewards for the job.

This is where strategy comes into play. We already established that demand cannot be negative. Thus, any job which would reduce demand to less than zero reduces it to zero instead. So if you do the 24-hour job which in my example is worth 95 demand when the demand bar is at 10 instead of at 100 you get the full benefit but only had to let demand rise to 10 instead of waiting for it to rise to 100. So in this example I could run ten 24-hour jobs in the same time it takes a person who is letting demand completely fill to run one job.

Thus, the best strategy is not to sync up all of your shops, but rather to stagger them so that you start a new job each time the white bar reaches the white line. In the actual game that time is approximately every 75 minutes.

The higher the demand bar is does not mean you will get higher xp or higher gold. All that matters is that the demand bar is above the minimum threshold. If you let it rise above that you are actually wasting some amount of demand because you could have started a job sooner than you did and thus be able to start the jobs after that sooner. If you are doing this correctly it should look like your demand is completely empty for all categories all the time.

With the exception of when you wake in the morning, if demand is significantly above the white line each time you log in, either you could have more shops in that category, or you could check in more often to increase your XP output, or both.

Placement
Arranging buildings so they can be boosted is key to rapid XP gains. A review of high-level players layout reveals that arranging all like-items together along roads with boosting decorations in between can increase rewards by 30-60%. Place your best producers in the center of decorations and poor one on the perimeter.

Tips and Tricks

 * 1) If you have two or more shops in the same category available for use and demand has just met the white line. Any job you start will likely completely deplete demand. Instead of letting the other shops sit idle, start short jobs in them, so they are available again by the time demand recovers and you check in again. Don’t let them just sit idle, unless you need the population elsewhere.
 * 2) If demand is a little above the white and you have two shops open and a longer job is a blue arrow job, Don’t start that job first. Run a short job in the first shop, so that demand does not dip below the white line, and then run the long job. If you do this in reverse your short job will be run with depleted demand. This takes some practice to know if you have enough demand built up that the first job will not bring demand too low and is usually a strategy that is useful in the morning.
 * 3) Better storage is a hidden bonus to XP production. This is because it frees up workers to build more shops to produce more XP. This is what buying storage is the 'best' way to spend nanos.
 * 4) Assisting Shops instead of resources or military buildings will help jobs finish quicker and help you earn XP quicker. This is a key part of the strategy used by players who are able to prestige 4+ times per day. They find other friends who also will assist only shops and then each player benefits from the increased XP.
 * 5) Pick the highest value based upon the time you'll return to the game. For example, before going to bed pick the highest value item that takes 8 (or 12?) hours or less.
 * 6) If you have many Shops/Ranches/Farms ready to start all at the same time here's the best process: first collect all products, upgrade one item, start your quest items, review possible values of all buildings and do the math of XP/hour (e.g. At high levels 200 is good, 100 is poor), start high-value & shutdown low-down items, and finally Accept the help from Friends.

For a full XP comparison between shops see Shops Comparison.