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I'm looking for some clarification on Anticipation and Payout in the circus system.
For a successful circus, the calculation is (Prestige + Final Anticipation) = Payout (in gp). So increasing the Anticipation by X also increases the Payout by X.
The amount of gold spent to raise Anticipation through advertising far outpaces the amount of gold gained for a successful circus. For example, it costs 20 gp to raise the Anticipation by 4 (5 gp per 1 Anticipation). The gold per Anticipation ratio is even starker at higher levels, to a max of 3000 gp for 50 Anticipation (60 gp per 1 Anticipation). Even on a critical success where the payout is doubled, the circus still loses substantial money on advertising. So why would a circus spend money to raise Anticipation?
There are similar scaling problems for other aspects of the circus. For example, the permanent upgrade watermarked tickets (50 gp) allows Prestige to be treated as 2 points higher than it actually is for calculating Payout. But it would take 25 circus performances for the cost of the watermarked tickets to break even with the Payout gained!
Is there an error in the formula for Payout? Should (Prestige + Final Anticipation) be multiplied by party level or another modifier?
It seems like Prestige may be the more important variable given this statement: "The circus’s Prestige will factor into several rewards and events throughout the Extinction Curse Adventure Path." This may incentivize players to minimize Anticipation to they can be sure to succeed and gain Prestige more quickly/easily.
Am I missing something? We are really enjoying the AP so far (halfway through Book 1), and I'd like to keep the players engaged in running the circus -- but the math does not seem to incentivize investing in the circus.