Wealth
Wealth is a sum of the Market Value from your items, buildings, and pawns. A colony's total wealth can be viewed in the History tab and going to the Statistics tab. It has a few impacts on the game.
Raids
Wealth is a key factor in determining the size of raids. Specifically, a colony's entire wealth is converted into "Storyteller Wealth", as follows:
| "Storyteller Wealth" = (Colony Wealth Items + Colony Wealth Creatures + (Colony Wealth Buildings * 0.5)) |
In practice, this just means that buildings placed on the ground count as half wealth for the purposes of raids.
Base points
This "Storyteller Wealth" is then linearly interpolated on a graph to create "Wealth Points".
| Graph | Points | Storyteller Wealth |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | |
| 0 | 14,000 | |
| 2,400 | 400,000 | |
| 3,600 | 700,000 | |
| 4,200 | 1,000,000 |
At 14,000 "Storyteller Wealth" there are "0 Wealth Points". At 400,000 "Storyteller Wealth" there are "2,400 Wealth Points". Between 14k and 400k wealth, points will increase by (2,400 - 0) / (400,000 - 14,000) per wealth. This means that 1 raid point is worth ~ 160.83 wealth solely from wealth points. Wealth also has an impact on "pawn points" factor.
"Pawn points" has a similar curve to wealth points which can be viewed in the pawn points section. To cut to the chase, at or below 400k wealth, 1 raid point/colonist = 3120 wealth. At 10 healthy adult colonists, 312 wealth = 1 raid point from "pawn points". Therefore, the true amount of wealth per raid point depends on your colonist count
Assuming wealth < 400k, 1 storyteller wealth gives (1/160.83) + (colonist count/3120) raid points. Therefore, 1 raid point would roughly equal to (19.4 + colonist count) / 3120 wealth. At 0 colonists, 1 raid point is worth 160.83 storyteller wealth. At 10 colonists, 1 raid point is worth ~106.1 storyteller wealth.
Other factors
Raid points are then multiplied by a number of other factors, the most important being difficulty. Specifically, the "threat scale" setting is a multiplier to raid points. A colony at 200% threat scale will double the raid points, meaning wealth matters twice as much.
Once processed, these points are converted directly into raiders. Each raider has a "Combat Points" value, where 1 raid point = 1 combat point. For example, a scyther is worth 150 combat points. At 100% threat with 0 colonists and no other modifiers, this scyther would be worth 
24,125 Storyteller Wealth. For a list of what raiders the storyteller can "buy", see Raiders.
The storyteller setting, Wealth-independent progress mode will make colony wealth have no impact on the game. Instead, "Storyteller Wealth" will be separate from colony wealth. Storyteller Wealth instead will increase linearly over time, until reaching $1,000,000 wealth at the desired Years until maximum threat.
Expectations
Colony wealth directly impacts the mood and recreation tolerance loss of your colonists. The higher your wealth, the less innately happy a colonist will be and the more bored they will become with their recreation sources.
| Name | Mood | Wealth Limits | Recreation Tolerance Loss/Day |
Num. of Recommended Recreation Types |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extremely low expectations | +30 | 0 - 15,000 | 18% | 2 |
| Very low expectations | +24 | 15,000 - 31,000 | 13% | 3 |
| Low expectations | +18 | 31,000 - 81,000 | 11% | 3 |
| Moderate expectations | +12 | 81,000 - 182,000 | 10% | 4 |
| High expectations | +6 | 182,000 - 308,000 | 8% | 5 |
| Sky-high expectations | 0 | 308,000 - 1,000,000,000 | 7% | 6 |
Elite expectations |
−6 | High expectations as leader or moral guide | 7% | 6 |
| Supreme expectations |
−12 | Sky-high expectations as leader or moral guide | 7% | 6 |
Conceited nobles
will ignore this expectation moodlet at higher titles - conceited barons replace regular expectations with −6 Noble Expectations, while conceited counts and higher get −12 Royal Expectations. The Ideoligious Roles of leader and moral guide instead act as an offset to mood, acting as if they had expectations 2 levels higher.
In addition, a pawn's ideoligion may expect certain things at certain expectation levels. For example, a Transhumanist ideoligion will desire artificial body parts once expectations reach Moderate.
Room stat
Wealth is a room stat. The sum of all items, buildings, and walls in a room contributes towards wealth. Wealth has no impact on its own, but it increases Impressiveness. Certain types of rooms give positive moodlets if they are impressive, such as a +5 Very impressive dining room or +6 Extremely impressive bedroom.
Like the other room stats, wealth on its own has a diminishing impact in making a room impressive. Typically, ways of increasing wealth also increase its beauty.
Archonexus quest
 | This section relates to content added by Ideology (DLC). Please note that it will not be present without the DLC enabled. |
A total colony wealth of $350,000 is required to accept the first part of The Archonexus quest. In exchange for your entire colony, you will get an archonexus map piece. Three map pieces are required in total, meaning you'll need 3 separate colonies at this wealth threshold. You don't need to restart again for the third colony.
Analysis
- For strategies on limiting wealth, see wealth management. For strategies on increasing wealth, see money making guide.
To put it simply, you shouldn't feel the need to micromanage wealth, even in Losing in Fun. Extreme forms of wealth management are only really required when playing in an extreme custom difficulty. Wealth scaling means that, as your colony becomes stronger, raids become stronger - a simple relationship. So long as you invest reasonably into good weapons and armor, you should catch up. The expectations moodlets can be countered by placing sculptures and making rooms more beautiful.
Practical examples
In some scenarios, wealth can be helpful. For small rooms, like bedrooms, increasing wealth has a key impact on overall Impressiveness without impacting space.
- Example 1:
In a 6x7 room, going from wood floor to carpet can turn a room from +0 Dull to +3 Slightly impressive, from both the beauty and the wealth itself. 42 tiles of carpet would be worth 520, which is then halved for raid points because it is a placed building.
In Strive to Survive, the upgrade to carpet is less than 1/18th of the cheapest possible raider (per bedroom). This is almost negligible. On the flip side, wealth can matter massively at high difficulties. At 500% difficulty, upgrading just 3 bedrooms to carpet would lead to an extra raider. With 9 colonists, that's 3 tribal raiders by using carpet bedrooms. With pirates, this could potentially lead to an extra doomsday rocket launcher or so.
- Example 2:
The effects of wealth alone, and the effect of wealth and beauty combined, is demonstrated pictures below:
The direct impact of wealth in a small 5x5 room, ignoring beauty completely.
Ignore it being a "barracks"; bedrolls were used for demonstration purposes.
(Bedrolls do not impact space or beauty)
A wooden large sculpture (normal quality) adds
196, and turns the same room from Mediocre to Slightly impressive, mostly due to beauty.
In Strive to Survive and below, this wealth won't seriously improve raids, even when using multiple sculptures in multiple rooms. At this difficulty, it takes 49 of the same sculpture to add a single extra raider.
