Villager gather rates

[Pingstar]

I was just looking at this link
http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/for ... 32509,0,10
and was thinking that putting villies on mills and plantations early in the game and upgrading with home city cards and building upgrades would actually be faster than hunting and using mines. Anyone else use this strategy or is my math off. I usually use up all hunted and mines before building mill/plantations, but think maybe mills/plantations is the way to go.

[Hydrovert5]

You should always exhaust your natural resources before moving on to mills and plantations, unless you're getting raided heavily.

The exception is the British, where they always have excess wood and should move on the plantations and mills a lot faster than other civilisations, as a general term.

[Lost_my_hope]

Interesting theory, but I don't think it's worth it because mills and plantations are just so expensive. After spending that 400 or 600 wood, it'll take a long time before the building has paid for itself. And you'll need to ship those cards like Sustainable Agriculture and Cigar Roller to make them more profitable, while there are some other age2 cards out there that are probably better in the earlier stages of the game.

P.S. I don't agree completely with you hydrovert, having an excess is never good. If you're British and you have built 20 manors, you can put some woodcutters on food or gold. The fact that the British have more villagers than other civs does mean that you'll deplete natural resources near your base faster (I think) so you will indeed need to build mills and plants faster.

[36drew]

[quote=""Pingstar""]I was just looking at this link
http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/for ... 32509,0,10
and was thinking that putting villies on mills and plantations early in the game and upgrading with home city cards and building upgrades would actually be faster than hunting and using mines. Anyone else use this strategy or is my math off. I usually use up all hunted and mines before building mill/plantations, but think maybe mills/plantations is the way to go.[/quote]

Doesn't work in reality. As Hydro has mentioned, the british seem to be one civilization that can bypass this rule. That said you want to exhaust natural resources before making the transition.

Getting up 3 plantations and 3 mills will cost 3600 wood. That's an unreal number of villager seconds for resources that gather slower than their natural counterpart. The market + upgrades is really cheap anyway.

[36drew]

[quote=""Lost_my_hope""] The fact that the British have more villagers than other civs does mean that you'll deplete natural resources near your base faster (I think) so you will indeed need to build mills and plants faster.[/quote]

True and good point. I remember many games with dutch and otto where I won with only my first and second hunt.

[deadhanddan]

while mills and plants r rather expensive , in RE 1.02 or even better fp 1.1 if you are lucky enuff to catch a map with cree then ship landgrab and tech the cree building cost reduction at the TP , it lowers all building cost by 25%

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

When I first started, I thought mills and plantations were better than natural resources just because they keep everything simple. Everyone just works away next to the TC and everything is hunky dory. Of course, hard experience taught me that this never happens. You need to straggle out to find hunts and mines. It's part of the game. Is it complex? Yes. Is it risky? yes. Is it ncessary? Yes. The thing that always peeved me about Japan was that they never had to expose their vils to the risks of hunting. I still think that is a major reason they are such a strong civ. Reducing the risk of crushing raids is a sure way to win games.

I recommend getting used to buying market upgrades. They are your best friend.

[IndyBrit]

If you do all of the math - ie. cost of mills/plants, cost of upgrades (which the natural upgrades are quite cheap), and the lost opportunity cost of using cards like land grab plus upgrade cards, then non-natural resources never pay out.

The reason is that in non-treaty games they won't pay out until 30+ minutes or so assuming you don't go straight to imperial (in which case using mills/plants delays imperial and again they NEVER pay out), and a 30-minute pay out is typically too long to matter (i.e. it doesn't actually pay out if you don't live to see it pay out). In treaty games, mills/plants will never pay out due to delaying imperial time. The "lost" resources for 99 villies with just a 2-minute delay from industrial versus imperial is pretty shocking (e.g. roughly about 3,000 gold on plantations).

There are two significant factors that a raw resource count analysis does not measure. First is convenience. If you lose time walking around chasing hunts, having idles because your guys don't see the next deer and you miss that, or tap your buddies gold mine and accidentally clean out his crates at the same time, there is a net loss in efficiency there that is real but difficult to measure. The second is security. The math shifts dramatically if you lose 3-4 hunters out there on the plains, plus you add in cost to build outposts (roughly a mill at Land Grab prices), plus you add in idle time while your villies run from raids or hide in outpots, again you have real but difficult to measure losses.

So, we have a continuum. If the security and convenience costs are high, you should switch to mill/plantation, if the security and convenience costs are low, you should stay on natural resources. Security and convenience favor early naturals - there are lots of hunts and mines, and few enemies running around. Later, the ratio shifts dramatically as more bad guys appear and you have to go further for hunts and mines. Where this switch occurs depends on your civ, your opponent and his strategy, and the present game situation (e.g. how much map control you have).

You should NEVER switch before the 2-3 hunts and 1-2 mines around your base are gone. You should strongly consider staying with naturals for a while after that, again depending upon your opponents and how the game is going.

[Macabee]

I've started building a farm and plantation rather early with Aztecs for 2 reasons even while gathering natural resources hopefully using land grab. The first is raiding. The second is that Aztec upgrades for food and coin happen at these places. These upgrades effect food and coin gather rates universally but do double duty on the farm or plantation as well. Whereas, except for wood, the upgrades at the market are only for natural gathered resources.

Mac

[GeneralMichael]

In treaty 40 games I have figured that the villagers gather faster from hunts and mines until age 3 when you get all upgrades for the mills and send the age 1 or 2 mill or plantation gather rate increase card. So in rush you should definetly not go to mill/farm or plantation before age 3 unless you have run out of hunts or mines, or are heavily raided since you need to send those military shipments before those eco ones

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

I don't know about the exact numbers, but I know that 20 settler wagons on plantations with the building upgrades, royal mint, guild artisans and later excessive taxation bring in more coin than a 8-bank Dutch econ.

[Lost_my_hope]

speaking of max upgraded settler wagons, what do you guys think is the best amount of settlers to have with them? I like to remain at 70 vill population (20 sw and 50 vills) so I have more pop space for military, but I'm not sure if that's the ideal situation.

[wicked_assassin]

in dm evryone exaust first the natrual recources before using mills. And this is a post age 4 situation.

so in supremacy it's the same thing, first hunt

[36drew]

[quote=""Lost_my_hope""]speaking of max upgraded settler wagons, what do you guys think is the best amount of settlers to have with them? I like to remain at 70 vill population (20 sw and 50 vills) so I have more pop space for military, but I'm not sure if that's the ideal situation.[/quote]

It's easy to greedy since you can have a 140 villager economay (99 vills, and 20 SW). However, it's not really ever a good idea since your military population will be so low (there might be one exception where you are feedings resources but that is very low chance).

Genreally I like to have a 110 villager pop. Sometimes if my micro is deecent enough, and i'm not having to spam like a fool, 100 villager pop + 2 facts is just fine.

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

[quote=""Lost_my_hope""]speaking of max upgraded settler wagons, what do you guys think is the best amount of settlers to have with them? I like to remain at 70 vill population (20 sw and 50 vills) so I have more pop space for military, but I'm not sure if that's the ideal situation.[/quote]

I kind of like having 70 vils and 20 SWs. That leaves 90 spots for military, and gives you a stronger econ than any other civ (with no boats). Don't forget, guild artisans on 20 SW represents an additional 14 vils added to your overall gathering rate, so you not only have more total vils (20 SW = 40 vils + 70 regular vils = 110 vils), but your 20 SWs actually represent 54 vils, giving you 124 vils for only 110 pop space. Needless to say, spammage is not an issue with that econ behind you. It gave me a 3400 score in a treaty game once.

Aufgabe?