A study on food collection rates

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rufio_eht
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A study on food collection rates

Post by rufio_eht »

I know there is some material already out there, mainly cyclos guide, but I found some of the statistics to be inaccurate.

I did a test on collecting food, which yielded the following results. Each value is the amount of food collected in one minute (yes I waited a minute for each) by one villager/fishing boat. Civ was russians, map yucatan.

No upgrades at all, from slowest to fastest:

-Farm: 28 fpm

-Fishing boat: 40

-Berries: 41

-Hunts: 52

-Herded Animal (Cow): 124

After the first mill upgrade, gathering was increased by 8 per sec, bring it to 36 p/min. Much to my suprise, Hunting Dogs only increased the gather rate by 4 per min, from 52 to 56.

The main reason I did this study was to see how effective livestock pens might be. There really seems to be some massive potential for incredible food gathering, and here is the data collected on cows, which I assume will apply to sheep as well.

Cow rate of fattening:

No upgrades: 69 fpm

Livestock Pen upgrade(150w,150g): +14 fpm

Fattening Shipment: +19 fpm

Cow decay Rate while dead: 45 fpm

Cow cost: 80 f

Max Cow pop: 20 at one time

Max fattened: 500 f

Sheep cost: 100f, max fat: 300 f

At this point, I probably wont be making any sheep, the numbers just don't add up, but cows are amazing. Mainly the gather rate, 3 times that of berries, the source of cows are renewable from themselves, safely next to your tc, 2.5 times faster than hunts. You are investing at least 200w and 1 card, and some vills time collecting the food.

Another interesting factor is you could have this operation going on in any corner of the map, taking up very little space, and difficult to see, if for example you are a Dutch player with banks but getting food cut off on say I dunno, Great Plains, if you plan ahead of time, you could have food and gold making the noob-bashing, drop-tricking, 2 ranks higher than you, teddy-bear huggin' mama's boy rusher mad enough to ... well i better just leave it at that, good day sirs.
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Re: A study on food collection rates

Post by lordandcount »

Did our game on mongolia think of this?
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Re: A study on food collection rates

Post by Soccerman771 »

[quote=""rufio_eht""]At this point, I probably wont be making any sheep, the numbers just don't add up, but cows are amazing. Mainly the gather rate, 3 times that of berries, the source of cows are renewable from themselves, safely next to your tc, 2.5 times faster than hunts. You are investing at least 200w and 1 card, and some vills time collecting the food.

Another interesting factor is you could have this operation going on in any corner of the map, taking up very little space, and difficult to see, if for example you are a Dutch player with banks but getting food cut off on say I dunno, Great Plains, if you plan ahead of time, you could have food and gold making the noob-bashing, drop-tricking, 2 ranks higher than you, teddy-bear huggin' mama's boy rusher mad enough to ... well i better just leave it at that, good day sirs.[/quote]

The brits have an amazing cow-boom, however it takes a couple of cards, and the economy-micro involved is almost absurd. However, this is good for maps like Mongolia and Texas where the cows roam free...

BTW, I love meeting those "noob-bashing, drop-tricking, 2 ranks higher than you, teddy-bear huggin' mama's boy rusher" in games and whooping them...
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Re: A study on food collection rates

Post by LaZy »

Soccerman771
BTW, I love meeting those "noob-bashing, drop-tricking, 2 ranks higher than you, teddy-bear huggin' mama's boy rusher" in games and whooping them...
I couldnt have put it any better myself.

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Re: A study on food collection rates

Post by rufio_eht »

nice try maurice but i was russians in that game, the post specifically identifies using Dutch =p

as for the other thing, yea, speechless, late nights, think I said all that i can. good times.
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Re: A study on food collection rates

Post by Cyclohexane »

[quote=""rufio_eht""]I know there is some material already out there, mainly cyclos guide, but I found some of the statistics to be inaccurate.

I did a test on collecting food, which yielded the following results. Each value is the amount of food collected in one minute (yes I waited a minute for each) by one villager/fishing boat. Civ was russians, map yucatan.

No upgrades at all, from slowest to fastest:

-Farm: 28 fpm

-Fishing boat: 40

-Berries: 41

-Hunts: 52

-Herded Animal (Cow): 124

After the first mill upgrade, gathering was increased by 8 per sec, bring it to 36 p/min. Much to my suprise, Hunting Dogs only increased the gather rate by 4 per min, from 52 to 56.

The main reason I did this study was to see how effective livestock pens might be. There really seems to be some massive potential for incredible food gathering, and here is the data collected on cows, which I assume will apply to sheep as well.

Cow rate of fattening:

No upgrades: 69 fpm

Livestock Pen upgrade(150w,150g): +14 fpm

Fattening Shipment: +19 fpm

Cow decay Rate while dead: 45 fpm

Cow cost: 80 f

Max Cow pop: 20 at one time

Max fattened: 500 f

Sheep cost: 100f, max fat: 300 f

[/quote]

I've tested the farm (and rice paddy, mill) before and gotten 30 food at one minute. Make sure you pause the game, have the villager right at the food source, click the food source, un-pause, then pause again at 1 minute. 30 food per minute = 0.5 (which is correct, 0.5 * 60 = 30). 40 food per minute = 0.67 which is also correct for berries (0.67 * 60). I've also tested fishing, plantations, etc. Now Mills are not actually 0.67 like the proto file states because the lazy Europeans are always walking around bumping into each other. It actually comes out to 0.5 per second (30), same as Asians and Natives. This may be inaccurate, but that is game design. :D Make sure you hold the mouse over the little red triangles in each cell. These are notes and I tried to describe these discrepancies when the occur.

The 0.84 for hunting does not include walk time. For this reason, I always use berries as a base value for calculating villager seconds. It is very misleading to say hunting is the best gathering resource when you have to walk to get there (many villagers walking that is), whereas berries do not move. Regardless, 0.84 * 60 = 50.4. This is correct.

Also if you get the first hunting upgrade (10%), 10% * 0.84 = 0.084 and 0.084 + 0.84 = 0.924. Now use this value and multiply by one minute. 0.924 * 60 = 55.44. Your answer was 56 which could be accounted for by pausing and un-pausing a nano second to slow. Make sure you read the “Miscellaneous Notes” in each section, they describe a ton and show examples of the calculations in many instances.

Your test data matches up exactly with the calculated values in the Guide. What exactly is inaccurate? I would like to correct it.

I once thought livestock may be the solution to winning but it is just not the case. It takes an enormous amount of macro to pull this off and if you plan on fighting, your not going to be able to micro your units also (unless your head is like a machine). I could never pull it off, especially with the shipments required when you need military shipments. Not to mention, you will need food and those animals are still fattening (may have to kill early).

Now in treaty games, that is a different story, but I never play treaty.

Check out the worksheet "Resource Rate - Livestock" in the Quick Reference Guide. I updated it for TAD and includes the new animals and bonuses / penalties for new civs (remember yellow cells are input and blue are the results). There is a lot of info so it may seem a little hard to take in but there is also a lot of interactive features that can help you determine this for yourself. It allows a comparison for putting more villagers on the same animal (reduce decay), Total Food (after decay), Total Food (after decay & investment in each animal), Time to Fatten (Sec), Harvest Time (Sec), Spawn Time (Sec), Total Time (Spawn + Fatten + Harvest), Food /Sec, and much more. Unless you have fulling mills, you need at least 3 – 4 villagers on each cow. Doing so, and spawning 5 cows at once, will give you a food rate of almost 3 food per second (compared to hunting at 0.84).

What I concluded is that it looks great on paper, very hard to apply! It’s actually impossible if your opponent (in a 1v1) decides to attack you in Colonial. Good luck and let me know if you have any success!
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Re: A study on food collection rates

Post by rufio_eht »

I specifically recall reading in the guide that berry collection was .5/s. Which is of course 30/m. If the guide does not say this then it is a fault of my own memory, I'll check when I get home. But I recall berries and farming being listed at the same speed and was suprised to find when I tested that they were not.
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Re: A study on food collection rates

Post by rufio_eht »

So far, I only really use cows later on in the game, if it goes long which I hope it does not. I got similar advice from Drew that it is too micro intensive, but tbh, it seems like any other part of the game. The more you practice it, the more it becomes second nature. And I'm sure theres an easy way to effectively micro by limiting the number of gatherers so you know you will always have fully fattened cows and thus requiring no more than hitting a number and pressing a button from time to time.
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Re: A study on food collection rates

Post by Soccerman771 »

[quote=""rufio_eht""]So far, I only really use cows later on in the game, if it goes long which I hope it does not. I got similar advice from Drew that it is too micro intensive, but tbh, it seems like any other part of the game. The more you practice it, the more it becomes second nature. And I'm sure theres an easy way to effectively micro by limiting the number of gatherers so you know you will always have fully fattened cows and thus requiring no more than hitting a number and pressing a button from time to time.[/quote]

You should eat cows depending on the situation. If you don't have hunts close by and need food always eat the herdables standing around doing nothing but pondering the ways of...nvm adder already used that. That and you can always shift click them to berries.
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Re: A study on food collection rates

Post by rufio_eht »

Im assuming you mean cows which you find on the map, in which case I agree, and would go further as to use them anyways if it helps me ff since the gather rate is so much higher.

As for checking your data cyclo, I see now what you are talking about. Personally I would reccomend putting the actual data in front with the incorrect data under the subnote, as to avoid this kind of confusion.
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Re: A study on food collection rates

Post by Cyclohexane »

[quote=""rufio_eht""]Im assuming you mean cows which you find on the map, in which case I agree, and would go further as to use them anyways if it helps me ff since the gather rate is so much higher.

As for checking your data cyclo, I see now what you are talking about. Personally I would reccomend putting the actual data in front with the incorrect data under the subnote, as to avoid this kind of confusion.[/quote]

Perhaps, but the only thing incorrect is the Mill food collection but if you look at the proto file, it is correct. It is just a game design flaw, not much I can do about that. I have it in a bright red cell. All of the villager second calculations are based off berries anyhow (can be changed but berries are a good comparison tool). There really is nothing incorrect unless you consider it incorrect to list the game file statistics (which are wrong due to design).

As far as cows go, they just take to long to get going. You will be attacked and unprepared. If you wait till later, you will still have to wait for them to fatten. The only way it would work is if you can convince your opponent to leave you alone for about 10 minutes while you get rolling. Even then, your macro will suffer. It could also work in a stalemate when you need a little extra kick (such as in an FFA).

I do encourage you to try, it is possible, but I think against an equally skilled opponent, you will always be struggling. On very select maps where you can find free cows, it could work. But then again, your opponent could be killing those cows early for an early age and early rush which would be way more effective. Attacking with a small force early is much better than a large force later. That will always be the problem with cows, the math is there, it is possible, but will never work against a rusher unless you significantly out skill him, but then you would win anyway.
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