Why buying wood at the market can actually be good

[Darwin_]

I hear a lot of people say that you should never use the market to buy resources, except in the beginning to get a good market start. However, in terms of villager seconds, buying that first 100w for 125 isn't that inefficient (you are only losing 8 vill seconds to get the wood), and once you have placer mines, it is actually way more efficient to buy wood than chop it, up until it costs 137 coin. That means you can buy 100 wood up to 12 times and be saving a total of over 200 villager seconds. However, you do have to factor in the amount of coin you are losing from your mines, which for civs like germany and france can be a big deal, and make this not actually that viable in the long run.

For Dutch, buying wood is actually incredibly efficient, even without placer mines, as their settlers gather coin more quickly. I have seen some people do a market start with dutch on 200w, so I tried it out and also chose to buy the 300w (I was on EP) for my bank, and I was able to get the bank up noticeably quicker, like 5-10ish seconds earlier. You don't even have to do it then, you can do it later on as well. If you only do a 4 bank semi you still need some wood, but sometimes sending 1k wood first in fortress is kinda overkill, so maybe just try buying the wood that you need for houses and ship something like 8 skirm or 9 ruyter first.

So, if you just need a little bit of wood quickly, and you have placer mines, don't be afraid to just buy it at the market instead of chopping for it, and you will save a fair number of vill seconds doing so.

Discuss! Am I a total nub? Do I have my head up a Daimyo's Butt?

[WickedCossack]

This is one of the reasons I go age 1 market as dutch everygame. So good.

[fearfuloatmeal]

Hmmm, very interesting. I usually buy 100 wood from my market by getting the first gopher treasure so my vils go straight to food and I don't have to mine the 25 gold if you start with 100 gold, which you usually do get just 100. I usually buy a TP with the extra 100 wood off the start if i happen to get a 300 wood start and i can just chop 50 wood for hunting dogs. But buying that 100 wood with the 125 gold can get you hunting dogs very quickly which is very good for a faster age up. Or if you get a minimum of a 50 wood treasure you don't need to trade to get hunting dogs.

[forgrin]

I used to do this with RE ports alot in early fortress etc since the limiting resource is always food with them. You can buy wood for houses when necessary, allows you to adjust to your own population as needs be.

[pecelot]

I don't think anyone says you should never do it
For Dutch market plays check out Starvation finals game 1 ( @Mitoe ):

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Also my Dutch comp-stomp guide:

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=6444#p196116



Additionally, it's also efficient to trade 100 food for 75 coin with a market start with no coin treasures.

[__Uhlan__]

One thing to keep in mind (especially in team games) is actually a market place, so if player A beats you to the punch and already traded 5-7 times your not getting as good of a deal as you would normally, so always double check the price before trading. Just thought I'd throw that out there. But yea I trade for 300w atleast in 80% of my games.

[momuuu]

I think your maths might be off a little.

Market is super underused anyways, just buy whatever balances your resources.

[lordraphael]

One thing to keep in mind (especially in team games) is actually a market place, so if player A beats you to the punch and already traded 5-7 times your not getting as good of a deal as you would normally, so always double check the price before trading. Just thought I'd throw that out there. But yea I trade for 300w atleast in 80% of my games.

same in 1v1

[WickedCossack]

Wait hold on. What you guys on about? Does the price change for you if other people in the same game are buying/selling? Wut?!?!!? Haha damn.

[pecelot]

Market is super underused anyways, just buy whatever balances your resources.

aka the Aizamk macro

[lordraphael]

Wait hold on. What you guys on about? Does the price change for you if other people in the same game are buying/selling? Wut?!?!!? Haha damn.

it does

[WickedCossack]

Well.

Fuck me.

[Kaiserklein]

125g for 100w is a more or less fair trade (depends on market upgrades). I definitely buy a bit of wood instead of chopping it when I get the 2nd gold upgrade. But don't do it too much, then you deplete your gold mines. It's especially useful in age 1 when you go early market.
It's actually the same as selling food. Selling food is a very good trade when you have steel traps, because 100f with steel traps is worth only 60-ish gold with placer mines, and you instead get 75g for it, which means you basically gain 15g for free. But again you don't want to deplete your hunts too much, so just do it when you need to age up/finish a batch of units for example.

[__Uhlan__]

One thing to keep in mind (especially in team games) is actually a market place, so if player A beats you to the punch and already traded 5-7 times your not getting as good of a deal as you would normally, so always double check the price before trading. Just thought I'd throw that out there. But yea I trade for 300w atleast in 80% of my games.

same in 1v1

yes, i put espeically in team games becuase more people mean more of a chance of alot of trading that went on.

[Kaiserklein]

I think your maths might be off a little.

Market is super underused anyways, just buy whatever balances your resources.

With steel traps and placer mines, 100f is worth like 60-65g or so, and you buy it for 125g in the market. So basically you convert only half your resources when you buy food, and throw the other half :/
Same if you sell wood. You usually have approx 125g=100w (like when you buy wood), but here you sell 100w for 75g. So you just throw 50g.
It's really bad to do this and you should only do it when you have absolutely no other choice, like when you have 1100f to age up and no hunts in base, or when you have no food and need to call minutemen for a decisive pop. But do it as rarely as possible

[britishmusketeer]

Well.

Fuck me.

You've never tried to buy 100w in age 1 for a house and it's randomly 126c?

[Hazza54321]

Well.

Fuck me.

You've never tried to buy 100w in age 1 for a house and it's randomly 126c?

And i had this guy as a teammate smh

[pecelot]

/s?

[yurashic]

Buy food, sell wood, be a bad guy.