Developed by Gamious and published by Leiting Games on Android and iOS platforms, the simple yet highly addictive oil tycoon business simulation title from 2016, Turmoil, has finally made its way to mobile platforms. Despite the plethora of business sim games that populate both the Play Store and the App Store, Turmoil is unlike any of the idle clicker business sim games on mobile. While Turmoil is comparable to the other apps as far as simplicity and addictive elements are concerned, Turmoil provides a challenging, strategy-driven gameplay where loss of profits is an equally possible outcome.
Turmoil sets you up on a competitive environment whether you are up against 3 AI opponents or other players. AI competitors have unpredictability with regard to their bid decisions as well as individual performance and profitability. Random elements are present as well with each land you lease, making it impossible to determine just how bountiful each one is in terms of oil deposits along with other natural resources and impediments towards acquiring them.
Despite Turmoil’s simple objectives and interface, it can leave an overwhelming first impression to complete beginners, or even experienced players of loosely similar business sim games. Turmoil very much fits the description of a game that is very easy to pick up and learn, but difficult to master and may require several campaign cycles and experience to do so.
If you have just started playing Turmoil and want a faster pace towards levelling up your expertise, then stay with us and read on, as our Turmoil beginner’s guide has everything you need to jumpstart your oil tycoon career.
1. Understand The Basics As Perfectly As Possible
Although Turmoil does exhibit a very informative tutorial session at the start of the campaign, the pace at which the next sets of stages will flow can leave little time to review and take note of every important information you come across with. The initial stages may be easy, but never easy enough to ensure that you will earn profits at the end of it. Profits are not guaranteed in Turmoil and there are plenty of scenarios that can lead to net loss and bankruptcy.
Another element to keep tabs on is the limited time to work the land. The pace at which days pass by can be too fast for the uninitiated. Most especially in the case of players who revel in idle clicker games, the experience can be somewhat demanding in Turmoil as there will hardly be any moments that you should stay idle, especially while working on a leased land where time is always of the essence.
Avoiding idle moments, however, should not necessarily mean blindly spending hard-earned money. Despite random elements, the most impactful for which relate to oil locations underground as well as volume, there are basic cycles in Turmoil that generally apply to every round or stage. From leaving town and mining oil on leased lands, you should get to familiarize yourself fully with what to regularly expect and how you should react if expectations vary from actual results.
From leaving town, you will always be taking with you a mere $2,000 as budget for your oil exploration ventures. The first step once you reach the leased land I to deploy a dowser who will start looking for oil. There will be alternative means to search for oil once you purchase upgrades later on but dowser do get the job done. Once the dowser has signaled in the affirmative, it is time to purchase and put up an oil pump in the dowser’s location.
Pumped oil naturally cannot be stored on the oil pumps and will have to be transferred. You will need to purchase a horse equipped with a cart to transport oil you mined to either store located at the ends of each map. Stores hardly keep a stable buying price and will continue to increase or decrease buying prices throughout the lease period. Selling at too low a price will naturally result in a net loss and you only other option is to hold on to your precious oil.
Holding off on selling, however, cannot be made with just horses. You will have to purchase a storage unit where you can keep the oil you mine. Note that oil kept in storage at the end of the lease period is deemed lost and will not be automatically converted to any monetary value. At the end of the lease season, which may vary depending on stage, your profits can be basically realized based on oil you have sold relative to expenses incurred.
Extra profits mean more working capital to invest in upgrades back in town. Every stage you complete almost always lead to a growth in the town as well. More structures and upgrade options become available as you progress to lease lands and mine more oil.
2. Decide On A Minimum Selling Price Early On
Planning and strategy plays a critical part in your success as an oil entrepreneur in Turmoil. The initial stages following the tutorial makes it so that you will basically just pump oil and sell quickly given the more limited time frame for the stage but later on, you will have plan ahead on how to make the most of the relatively longer period in your hands.
Part of planning ahead involves setting a personal price range within which you will sell oil. It all seems significant and dependent on different circumstances but having a pre-determined selling price range will ensure a swift decision in the fields. Again, a stage may have a lease period of six months but in actual gameplay, that may only take about 6 minutes. Time passes by very quickly in each stage and you should not have to burden yourself with decisions as to continue holding on to your oil supply or letting them go.
As an example, you can set your minimum selling price to $0.90. This means that you will continue to hold oil if both the stores are only buying oil for $0.89 or lower. This will generally be easy to uphold especially in the early stages and the only risks involved pushes you to purchase and put up more oil storages in the event that both stores will not reach the minimum price you want.
Regardless of your decision on how to set your minimum selling price and make your standards flexible, there will always be natural exceptions to the general policy. In the event that you need extra cash to ensure that you do not lose more in the process, then selling oil even below your minimum selling price becomes acceptable.
Likewise, if time is running out and you still have plenty of supply to dispose of, then it only becomes practical to dispose of everything at whatever price as any amount is better than 0 at the end of the lease period.
3. Strategize Right From The Get-Go
For starters, having a good idea of just what exactly you can afford to ensure you will have enough cash to make your first sale and start earning cash back again is important. With dowsers only costing $100, oil pumps costing $350, and horses costing $150 each, you basically only need $600 to start selling oil that you mine along with the usual cost of pipes you need to lay out. Despite variances in pipe-laying costs, allocating $300 for the initial ones will be an appropriate enough budget.
That will leave you with an extra $1,100 still that you can readily invest to beef up your oil exploration activities with hopes of selling more within the given period. To give you a huge head start, we recommend going with at least 3 dowsers early on.
Part of the random elements found within the world of Turmoil relates to the pace at which dowsers can discover where toil can be found. Deploying 3 early on will at least make up the time it takes to discover oil with the other 2. There is no loss here as well as the waving dowsers will be there until you are ready to put up an oil pump.
The ratio is not always 1 is to 1 when it comes to oil pumps and horses. Keep a keen eye on just how fast oil is being pumped out of the ground and how fast your carriages fill up and take oil to stores or your storages. The tutorial that sends you through a linear approach towards purchases and the notion that there is a cycle across stages initially set you on a mindset of keeping everything paired up. There will be cases when you can have multiple oil pumps set up to suck oil from practically the same source. Likewise, there will be scenarios s well when 5 horses may tend to 2 separate oil sources.
You should always consider how many of each tool or item you will utilize for the entire lease season. Even a rough estimate helps most especially if you can utilize them earlier especially in the case of the dowsers. What you want to avoid is to purchase more than what you need but with prices of dowsers, pipes, and so, everything is relatively cheap compared to losing opportunities to earn more.
One scenario you should always avoid are oil spillages. This happens when the oil you pump from under the ground is not immediately picked up by your transports and relocated to either the stores or the storages. Spillages do not only mean opportunity costs relating to loss of income that could have been gained have you sold them. Oil spillages in Turmoil come with a hurtful penalty that can negatively impact your profitability.
4. Keep Bonus Profits In Mind
The rate at which you can find oil coupled with being able to sell it at a reasonable price should make it fairly easy for you to earn profits. Beyond what you earn as a result of the tally between expenses and sales profits, however, Turmoil provides extra means for you to earn additional capital. This comes in the form of bonus cash that can be awarded to you following the satisfaction of certain conditions. As a budding entrepreneur, you should make an effort to always keep these same targets in mind not just for the extra profits, but also because these objectives are in line with maintaining efficiency.
If you deplete all oil supplies from the leased land, there is an extra $1,000 bonus for you. The same applies if you manage to sell every drop of soil you mined and if you withdrew early from the leased land. Each of these tasks may sound very challenging, but careful strategy and planning can help you earn all 3 in every stage, ensuring a huge bonus of $3,000. It can take some time and practice to consistently pull it off, which is why it is best to keep it in mind early on and make it a habit to pursue each one as you go from one stage to the next.
Depleting oil on a leased land will surely vary from one stage to the next, given that lands you mine oil from employ random elements as to how much oil there is to discover. This will be very challenging on the earlier stages given that you have yet to procure any upgrades that will help you discover and pump oil at a faster rate. Just the same, strategies will similarly apply regardless of the scenario and your best way of going about it is to aggressively seek out old deposits and employ means of getting them faster.
This can primarily include having 2 or more oil pumps deployed over the same oil source when necessary. You can also upgrade pipes to be wider, or be able to split across to pump oil from different locations. Remember as well that you can always extend pipes further across different directions in pursuit of additional oil pockets beyond what you can see as a result of the initial pipes laid out. Keep in mind that you may have to employ additional horses as well for a more efficient transfer of oil from the pumps to the stores or storages.
The cash bonus for being able to sell every ounce of oil does not necessarily depend on accomplishing the first objective. For this target, your goal is to empty out the oil pockets you have discovered and ensure that no drop of oil remains with your carriages or storages by the end of the lease period. In this case, you will once again make exceptions to adhering to price floors relating to your selling decision as you should definitely empty out your supplies regardless of how much stores are buying.
Last, but definitely not the least, getting the $1,000 cash bonus for choosing to withdraw on the leased land ahead of schedule is perhaps the easiest to accomplish. If it so happens that you have extracted every bit of oil from the land and managed to sell them off as well before the end of the lease period, then you have done an exemplary performance. Otherwise, there are a few questions to consider before you decide to leave the leased land and proceed with the early withdrawal.
If you feel that staying till the end of the lease period will earn you more than $1,000, then that is enough reason for you to stay. You have basically earned profit if your cash balance plus the remaining lease balance is greater than the $2,000 you started off with. However, Turmoil is not simply about earning income but rather earning as much income as you can. Another question to think about is will you incurring additional expenses with the remaining time so as to accrue more costs by the end of it than profits.
In case you have not done so, you can click on the date at the upper left side of the screen to check details of the land lease calendar. You can more vividly see the end of the lease period as well as the remaining lease value that will be returned to you should you choose to withdraw. To initiate a withdrawal at any time, you can simply click on the “Withdraw Land Lease” button at the lower right side of the window.
5. Avoid Taking Loans As Much As Possible
Turmoil makes for a bit more realistic approach towards entrepreneurial ventures with its built in loan features. If you are strapped for cash, there will always be an option to take a loan from the bank. Extra sources of capital always sound like a good thing and, even in real life, the option is viable provided that the added income you generate as a result of the loan will amount to a bigger amount of income that covers the interest rate.
The interest rate in Turmoil is a flat 25% per annum, which means that you will owe $2,500 to the bank following a year after borrowing $2,000 dollars. While there are instances where the 25% interest can easily be covered by the extra income you may earn in your business venture, we recommend veering away from it as much as possible given the risks involved. While not entirely unavoidable there are plenty of ways to help you avoid having to rely on bank loans just so you can continue on your oil tycoon adventure.
With $20,000 as a starting capital, you already have a huge buffer in your hands to make a profitable enterprise. It all boils down to managing investments and expenses as well as striving as much as you can to ensure profits by the end of each adventure. There are basically only 2 sets of unavoidable costs that come your way. The first comes as a bid amount or payment to lease a piece of land for you to explore, which is a minimum of $2,000. The second is the budget you take for the exploration itself, which is another $2,000.
With both in mind, you basically need to always maintain a rolling balance of $4,000 between each stage. You can opt to provide a small buffer in case you actually experience a loss in one of your next adventures, but the rest is capital that you should be able to invest in upgrades that support your goal of maximizing operations and profitability.
6. Do Not Hesitate To Purchase Upgrades You Need
In essence, there are no upgrades in Turmoil that is completely and absolutely necessary for you to earn profits. The starting assortment of tools at your disposal is sufficient for you to discover, extract, and sell oil. Turmoil, again, goes beyond simply earning profits from one stage to the next and while earning profits is a basic objective, the ultimate goal is to become the top oil tycoon in town and outclass all your rivals.
Upgrades available for purchase may start off as an expensive investment, which leads to higher upgrade costs taken to the next level. Proper utilization of each purchased upgrade, though, leads to an exponential increase in efficiency, which is key to maximizing profits.
To rationalize further, upgrade costs are basically one-time payments for improvements and conveniences that you can enjoy for the rest of your oil tycoon adventures. This means that the sooner you unlock and use an upgrade, the sooner it is you will recover back the money you invested in it.
Considering the number of upgrades that become available with every visit to town, along with the number of enhancements you can look forward to following the purchase of an upgrade, you can easily tell that it may take a long while before you can afford each and every possible upgrade there is, especially considering the limited period of time in the campaign.
For best results, peek through what each one does and assess which ones will benefit you more than the others, regardless of price so long as you can afford it. By being able to afford an upgrade, we mean considering the capital buffer or rolling capital you need to sustain land lease bids and budget for each adventure or stage.
Turmoil holds plenty more features on mobile that makes for an even more exciting and competitive adventure if you choose to purchase the full game. Although the random elements available in the free version already offers a lot to experience, the full version present additional gameplay elements that tremendously enhance the overall experience.
And that wraps up our Turmoil beginner’s guide and we hope that the tips and strategies we shared with you have endowed you with additional knowledge to improve your oil exploration skills and entrepreneurial expertise. If you have spent some time with Turmoil and have some extra tricks and tactics to share, feel free to let us know!