WickedCossack wrote:Sure, so like I said in twitch chat I think you've completely ignored critical points in your calculations:
Your build doesn't re-invest the VS gained from 5 vil
Taking the numbers from your logs we can see there is a 40 second window before all your manors complete from the 700w. Let's take a look at the VS difference in this 40 second window.
- VS loss from crates = 84 (being super charitable here in reality this will be at least 100 due to overgather and walking time inbetween the 3 crates)
- VS loss from earlier 5 vils 30x2 + 40x3 (using your manor build times) = 180
This gives us a total of 264 VS which is not re-invested. Your build logs just pool this extra VS but let's assume we re-invest it in wood and we find 264 VS is equivalent to a 145 wood difference. Now technically the 84 VS isn't a gain for the 5 vil player but assuming both builds are playing each other in a 1v1 the total 264VS/145w difference still exists (assuming a few vils gather wood for each player) but I'll again be charitable to you and give a 10s leeway to reinvest the 145w to compensate the 84 VS.
So for the 5 vil player a Manor starts building at 5:36 and finishes at 5:56 generating 27xp.
So taking 6:27 as a reference we can add 31 VS and a whole villager.
Now let's add in the xp bonus from the extra manor and we find that your 700w shipment should arrive about ~ 10 seconds earlier (no xp from the 5:46 vil, I don't know the exact timing on this, maybe test it in your program) so 6:17 would be a better reference point.
Furthermore your logs take place in a vacuum but since XP costs increase exponentially ANY action in the game (treasures, any combat) would reduce the time difference between 5:57 (5 vil shipment for the 700w player) and 6:17 which is always in favour of the 5 vil first player.
So my main point rests on the re-investment but a couple of other minor points:
i) Looking at your build logs it suggests you gathered 400w (of 700w) within 10 seconds as 3 manors finish completing 30 seconds after your shipment arrives. That requires a minimum of 5 villagers on crates which is rarely practical due to walking VS lost (and potential overgather VS lost) and I'd suggest that the most common number of villagers to pick up crates is lower (3 perhaps seems common? I rarely ever see 5 if ever.)
Either way you're looking once again at moderate VS deductions for 700w either in the logistics of the action of using 5 vils to pick up your crates or the manors being built later due to less vils picking up crates.
ii) To look at your first consideration This is again disregarding that there are better things to do with 700w. Ofc you are using this in favour of 700w but interestingly this works both ways.
You already conclude that 5 vil wins out in VS even despite ignoring re-investment assuming the 700w player spent it all on manors (which is not actually that uncommon, infact in some MU's id go as far to suggest its pretty common.)5v first: 2357 VS
700w first: 2236 VS
Now at this point your argument rests on the idea that the 5 vil player now has to spend his 700w on all manors but they can use the VS lead to create a new timing by investing it into production and military that is mathematically unachievable for the 700w player.
Anyway in conclusion to counter your original claim "therefore it is strictly better in all scenarios" is absolutely not the case in terms of heavy economic play and even with respect to some military timings.
This is why you canât win an argument with the tool but you can convince yourself enough to test it and see in game.