The point was that you don't need 5 t6 factories to avoid being techlocked, if with my city I can't get techlocked with 4 of them than how is an average user getting techlocked with 3-4 factories? (ok you could not use manufactoring spells that would work)
Even without the full model that I run, here is a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation. First of all, L24 manufactories are more efficient pop-wise than the maxed ones. 4xL27 T6 produce pretty much exactly the same as 5xL24 T6, while requiring 8.6K more pop. I could afford extra 5x5 for extra manu, but I can't get 8.6K pop extra in the same space (L27 would be slightly more efficient with respect to MMs). With 748% boost, 6x3h collections per day and 24/7 MMs, 5xL24 will net about 170K of T6 a day. That's a pretty aggressive profile, so let's say 150K T6/day to account for slippage.
So on the KP side of the equation, I run 3.6K points tournaments every week, plus a few buildings that produce KPs (no KP farming by any means - I don't even have any Carting Libraries placed at the moment). No KP buying at the moment. This nets long-term average of 60 KP per day (and this number had been very consistent since about Dwarves to the tune of 57-63 KP/day in each chapter). So nothing super extraordinary here. This doesn't even include negotiating any of the map provinces in this chapter so far. Most T6-gated research items in chapter 15 are 100-150 KPs, so average is pretty close to 120 KP, meaning by and large 2 days worth of KP production on average for T6 production to keep up.
Now, 150K/day is about 300K per 2 days, and that's even before one day of decay. There are several techs that need more T6 than that. You can adjust for that by stockpiling during techs that need less than that, but they're all pretty expensive (200K+), and stockpiling makes decay more of an issue.
But wait, there is more
Not all T6 are created equal. Just because I produce 300K of bismuth in 2 days doesn't mean I can get 300K of soap in 2 days. As I said, in my particular case moving bismuth->soap trades in a reasonable timeframe required 1.2-1.25:1 ratios. Add on top of that that KP inflows are not uniformly 60KP/day (quite a bit higher during tournament even if I try to manage inflows; and lower in the off days), and even with 5x T6 it can be somewhat sketchy
if the goal is zero-techlock.
The above is not just theory, it panned out exactly like that in my live playthrough. Like I mentioned, I
may have been able to get away with 4x T6, but I would be just as likely to fail my objective, if for nothing else than for inability to trade for non-boosts at a premium. Again, you bring up your example as a comparison. I'd argue my setup is much closer to the "average" user, especially on a going forward basis when players won't have forced downtime in-between Constructs and Elvenar chapters (I had only 8 days in between chapters, so no stockpiling for me). You KP inflow is indeed much higher than that "average" user, but you also have a lot more resources than average user, many of which directly impact this argument (e.g. available space/pop, L30 Simia and Timewarp, massive AW levels -> excess seed production so that sentient production can be juiced at will with timeboosts, which you also have in abundance given time in-between chapters). Plus you may have been able to trade 1:1 for non-boosts - this makes a big difference.
And the case about the person who sais 2600% pp needed, and 2 weeks for the chapter, thats pure BS.
Even is someone sends 5.8m of T6 as a gift to you, there is no way without diamonds or spending insane amound of goods that you can compensate for 3000KP you are still short when doing 6k points in the tournament, with a lvl 30 book of secrets and 7 dats 24KP from the KP bar.
I dont believe that anyone at that stage of the game can afford that much KP anyway, thats like what 40-50m goods? (ok I could afford that if I wanted but I dont lol)
You might be surprised at what is possible for some people
I was observing one of the top players on my server (live), and could track his chapter progress pretty easily by seeing what upgrades are up. So up to about day 16 (when I upgraded portal to L4) I was running even slightly ahead. This felt good
(this is deep-blue city, I am F2P). Then in the next week he pulled slightly ahead, but just marginally. Then around day 21 when I unlocked Residences and Barracks tech, I could see him starting Armories upgrades. So still pretty close. But imagine my surprise when 1-2 days later I checked this city, and saw no settlement except for the portal. Well, here comes PP-only mode I thought. And then I saw Thermal Spring of Youth and Vortex of Storage, both at L5. Wait, what?!
So that's about 3 weeks in mark. But even more impressive is not just that - is that it looked like 2/3rds of the chapter were done in literally 1 day. Can't imagine how much would that cost...
