Trading resources in the market

Jaeger · Post by **Jaeger** » 08 Oct 2015, 17:12

I just did some quick calculations to see if trading resources in the market is really as bad as everyone thinks.

You have 4 options in the market:

Buy 100 food for 125 coin.
Sell 100 food for 75 coin.

Buy 100 wood for 125 coin.
Sell 100 wood for 75 coin.

With some quick calculations, you can see that buying wood and selling food (with steel traps placer mines gangsaw) actually nets you some resources so it is good, but buying food and selling wood is absolutely terrible, you end up losing roughly 35% of your resources each time you do it. So the absolute WORST thing you can do in this game is sell wood and use the gold to buy food, which is VERY sadly what you have to do sometimes to get minutemen.

Trading one way in the market gets worse and worse, but it make reverse trading worse as well. For example if you buy wood 5 times, the price will go up from 125 to about 130. However, the coin you get from selling 100w will also drop from 75 to about 70.

yurashic · Post by **yurashic** » 08 Oct 2015, 21:42

Yes, it is cost-efficient to sell food and buy wood. Although don't do it too much, not only it becomes less efficient but also your natural food and gold run out faster.

S_I_D · Post by **S_I_D** » 08 Oct 2015, 22:50

It is def bad to use the market to much but I'd rather lose a few res then not get a full batch of a unit out in time or something, depending on the situation ofc.

momuuu · Post by **momuuu** » 08 Oct 2015, 23:06

Market usage is probably rarely ever bad.

I wonder if its worth it to buy food when your vills have to walk to the next hunt. It probably is. Other than that, its better to try to get your macro straight rather than using the market too much.

I think the idea that trading res is bad is nonsense though.

zoom · Post by **zoom** » 08 Oct 2015, 23:34

I often sell food early for coin to spend.

Post by **_H2O** » 08 Oct 2015, 23:53

Thats a great way to position the market. Lots of people dont realize how bad it is to buy food or sell wood. 35% is a huge hit. The only market feature I use is buy wood and rarely sell food. Sell food is only used when game break batches are about to finish.

Mitoe · Post by **Mitoe** » 09 Oct 2015, 01:31

To expand on Ryan's point, because in general you lose resources for using the market, you should avoid using it whenever possible. Developing bad habits like consistently buying food or selling wood, or even excessively buying wood and selling food will just end with you depleting your natural resources more quickly while also being inefficient.

Whenever you notice your resources are lopsided (meaning you have an excess of something or a lack of something), you should redistribute your vills accordingly and avoid using the market. Not redistributing your vills and using the market not only means you'll have this problem again over the next couple of minutes and have even more inefficient trades at the market, but it's also more likely you'll repeat this habit in future games.

Additionally, correcting your vill distribution rather than using the market at all, will actually result in you having more resources overall later, and therefore having more stuff later than you would otherwise have. For example, let's say my macro is REALLY bad, and for some reason I have like 1500f and 100c, and I'm training hussar: IDEALLY, I want to transfer food vills to coin, and sit on that food WITHOUT selling it for coin, even to finish my hussar batches, because over time I'll actually end up with less huss than if I had waited because of the resources I lose at the market.

So, as Ryan pointed out, the only time you want to use the market is when you really need to fix your resource levels FAST in a situation where you'll lose the game if you don't (e.g. I have 40 strelets under my TC, and 2 hussars in queue, but I'm sitting on like 650f and no coin, sell to get the huss out because they'll win me the game and I'll lose if I don't).

I think how players use the market is a big difference between strong players and average players, and learning how to avoid using it should improve your macro and gameplay overall.

Cometk · Post by **Cometk** » 09 Oct 2015, 01:45

buying food or wood effectively removes some coin from the map, meaning the four silver mines you have access to no longer pay for 8000c worth of units, rather 7875 or 7749c worth. however this only becomes important if the natural resources do at some point become depleted

something else to note is that constant redestribution of villagers wastes villager seconds. market conversion calcs should be made with this mind' it may not be resource-efficient to make the trade, but it's also not efficient to move villagers constantly

thestrider · Post by **thestrider** » 09 Oct 2015, 02:33

Very interesting thread. I typically try to distribute my vills good. But I think that getting your first 200 wood is definitely better to get from the market, rather then actually chopping it. With Germany I often do this when I start cav. The 3 settler wagon takes up 10 pop so I usually buy the 100 wood to not get popped.

Einfein · Post by **Einfein** » 09 Oct 2015, 05:43

Most players will probably disagree with me on this, but I've used the market heavily when playing Dutch and find it to be very viable. With their massive influx of coin I can use it to quickly grab any resources I'm currently lacking and get out the troops/techs that I need asap. On other civs I tend to not use it much as it gets expensive and counter productive very quickly.

yemshi · Post by **yemshi** » 09 Oct 2015, 12:55

What with advanced market? I wish I could test it myself but my math skills are out of any world.

Wuangaga · Post by **Wuangaga** » 09 Oct 2015, 17:31

yemshi wrote:What with advanced market? I wish I could test it myself but my math skills are out of any world.

Nickiru will know for sure.

_venox_ · Post by **_venox_** » 09 Oct 2015, 18:38

It's never worth to send advanced market because the alternatives (3 villagers, 3 cdb, 2 sw etc...) are way better and advanced market's benefit is too small to have any impact.

yemshi · Post by **yemshi** » 09 Oct 2015, 18:49

I have seen mayn (asian) spain players with that.

Mitoe · Post by **Mitoe** » 09 Oct 2015, 18:55

cometk wrote:buying food or wood effectively removes some coin from the map, meaning the four silver mines you have access to no longer pay for 8000c worth of units, rather 7875 or 7749c worth. however this only becomes important if the natural resources do at some point become depleted

something else to note is that constant redestribution of villagers wastes villager seconds. market conversion calcs should be made with this mind' it may not be resource-efficient to make the trade, but it''s also not efficient to move villagers constantly

Except once you know what you''re doing you shouldn''t really even have to redistribute your vills because you''ll start getting a feel for what your vill distribution should be at different points in the game. In an ideal world, you would never even have to consider using the market.

Jaeger · Post by **Jaeger** » 09 Oct 2015, 18:57

yemshi wrote:I have seen mayn (asian) spain players with that.

Even if you could get trades good enough to equate to 3 villagers, the trades you would do are the good ones (buying wood and selling food) which means that either your hunts are going to be depleted unnaturally fast or your mines are.

gh0st · Post by **gh0st** » 09 Oct 2015, 19:05

first few couple of trades to get wood are profitable imo, also buy 100w if you are popped at bad times!
Mostly it depends on the situation of the game! if you really need that full batch badly just do it with trading even though mathematics denies it

it can change the outcome of game!

Kaiserklein · Post by **Kaiserklein** » 09 Oct 2015, 19:46

I think there is a bunch of factors to consider.
Firstly, you will most often have steel traps + gang saw + placer mines, as ovi said. Then buying wood is not a good trade : 125g is worth a bit more than 104 wood, and each time you buy some wood the trade will become worse.
Howewer, you might get only placer mines and not gang saw, thinking you will buy wood a few times, and then it becomes worth it, since 125g will then be worth a bit less than 95 wood. But gang saw is so cheap that it might be better to get it and chop all the wood...
BUT selling food is really worth it ! 100 food is worth only 60 gold, and you can sell it for 75 gold... Of course, if you are on a map like texas with no food and a bunch of mines, it sucks. But on some maps with some civs you might be out of gold before you are out of food, so why wouldn't you use the market ? However, buying wood will never be good for your map cause i can't think of any map with more gold than wood...
Then we need to consider the fact that vils need to walk from a resource to the other if you switch them, which makes the market a bit more appealing.
And finally, the fact that you can buy exactly 100 wood makes it perfect for macro. Of course, a good macro can make you chop exactly 100 wood as well, but some times you get housed and you have to get a house so fast, and then buying 100 wood enables you to do this perfectly. Always better to have a perfect macro ofc, but no one does.

So I'd say on a high food map it can be good to sell food at start. Let's say you have 2 bison hunts, and you make a french musk/cav build. If you sell food 9 times, you will get 75 + 74 + 73 + 72 + 72 + 71 + 70 + 69 + 69 coin (I tried) while 100 food is always worth 60 coin. So you basically earn 15 + 14 + 13 + 12 + 12 + 11 + 10 + 9 + 9 = 105 free coin. And overall, you got 645 coin, which is almost the 650 you need for 5 huss + 5 musks + steel traps. If you also consider you don't need placer mines anymore (for this first batch only, of course) because you don't mine any gold, you can save an extra 75f + 75w. Plus 105 gold, what does it mean ? Like an extra 1 huss 1 musk, right ? And if you got enough food to afford this, I can't see any drawback. And then you just use 700w for placer mines once you got the first batch out, and all is fine, isn't it ? You even avoided to chop 75w, using crates instead, which is always nice.

I'm going to try this, to see if I really can get 5 musks/5 huss

momuuu · Post by **momuuu** » 10 Oct 2015, 00:39

mitoe wrote:
cometk wrote:buying food or wood effectively removes some coin from the map, meaning the four silver mines you have access to no longer pay for 8000c worth of units, rather 7875 or 7749c worth. however this only becomes important if the natural resources do at some point become depleted

something else to note is that constant redestribution of villagers wastes villager seconds. market conversion calcs should be made with this mind' it may not be resource-efficient to make the trade, but its also not efficient to move villagers constantly
Except once you know what youre doing you shouldnt really even have to redistribute your vills because youll start getting a feel for what your vill distribution should be at different points in the game. In an ideal world, you would never even have to consider using the market.

one thing you forgot to mention or havent thought of, is that even if you get the distributions perfectly (which is hard if you are making different batches every time, but lets assume you did get it right), food or mines are going to run out. If hunts and mines didnt run out so often, Id never struggle with res distribution. Unfortunately they do run out, and in that case trading at the market can be an efficient method to fix a nonstructural balance at the market.

Kaiserklein · Post by **Kaiserklein** » 10 Oct 2015, 02:26

I tried to save placer mines and sell food for the 2 first huss/musk batch as french and I get 5 huss + 5 musks everytime. You just need a map with good hunts for this, like high plains or some other esoc maps

Jaeger · Post by **Jaeger** » 10 Oct 2015, 02:33

kaiserklein wrote:I think there is a bunch of factors to consider.
Firstly, you will most often have steel traps + gang saw + placer mines, as ovi said. Then buying wood is not a good trade : 125g is worth a bit more than 104 wood, and each time you buy some wood the trade will become worse.
Howewer, you might get only placer mines and not gang saw, thinking you will buy wood a few times, and then it becomes worth it, since 125g will then be worth a bit less than 95 wood. But gang saw is so cheap that it might be better to get it and chop all the wood...
BUT selling food is really worth it ! 100 food is worth only 60 gold, and you can sell it for 75 gold... Of course, if you are on a map like texas with no food and a bunch of mines, it sucks. But on some maps with some civs you might be out of gold before you are out of food, so why wouldn''t you use the market ? However, buying wood will never be good for your map cause i can''t think of any map with more gold than wood...
Then we need to consider the fact that vils need to walk from a resource to the other if you switch them, which makes the market a bit more appealing.
And finally, the fact that you can buy exactly 100 wood makes it perfect for macro. Of course, a good macro can make you chop exactly 100 wood as well, but some times you get housed and you have to get a house so fast, and then buying 100 wood enables you to do this perfectly. Always better to have a perfect macro ofc, but no one does.

So I''d say on a high food map it can be good to sell food at start. Let''s say you have 2 bison hunts, and you make a french musk/cav build. If you sell food 9 times, you will get 75 + 74 + 73 + 72 + 72 + 71 + 70 + 69 + 69 coin (I tried) while 100 food is always worth 60 coin. So you basically earn 15 + 14 + 13 + 12 + 12 + 11 + 10 + 9 + 9 = 105 free coin. And overall, you got 645 coin, which is almost the 650 you need for 5 huss + 5 musks + steel traps. If you also consider you don''t need placer mines anymore (for this first batch only, of course) because you don''t mine any gold, you can save an extra 75f + 75w. Plus 105 gold, what does it mean ? Like an extra 1 huss 1 musk, right ? And if you got enough food to afford this, I can''t see any drawback. And then you just use 700w for placer mines once you got the first batch out, and all is fine, isn''t it ? You even avoided to chop 75w, using crates instead, which is always nice.

I''m going to try this, to see if I really can get 5 musks/5 huss

I''m not sure, but I think you calculated that 100 food is worth 60 gold if you have steel traps. But if you wanna gather it and sell it for french musk huss, you have to gather and sell it before you get steel traps. It''s still viable, just a couple or so less than 9 times. A nice bonus tho is that as the gold you get/100f decreases, the food you get/100g increases, so later on if you need to buy food it won''t be as bad of a trade as it would be initially. But ofc your enemy also benefits from this.

Jaeger · Post by **Jaeger** » 10 Oct 2015, 02:36

kaiserklein wrote:I tried to save placer mines and sell food for the 2 first huss/musk batch as french and I get 5 huss + 5 musks everytime. You just need a map with good hunts for this, like high plains or some other esoc maps

I think that''s more due to you not getting placer mines tough

, 75w + 75f>'105c. I also doubt it''s 105c because that''s probably counting steel traps which you don''t have in transition.

Kaiserklein · Post by **Kaiserklein** » 10 Oct 2015, 11:53

ovi12 wrote:
kaiserklein wrote:I think there is a bunch of factors to consider.
Firstly, you will most often have steel traps + gang saw + placer mines, as ovi said. Then buying wood is not a good trade : 125g is worth a bit more than 104 wood, and each time you buy some wood the trade will become worse.
Howewer, you might get only placer mines and not gang saw, thinking you will buy wood a few times, and then it becomes worth it, since 125g will then be worth a bit less than 95 wood. But gang saw is so cheap that it might be better to get it and chop all the wood...
BUT selling food is really worth it ! 100 food is worth only 60 gold, and you can sell it for 75 gold... Of course, if you are on a map like texas with no food and a bunch of mines, it sucks. But on some maps with some civs you might be out of gold before you are out of food, so why wouldnt you use the market ? However, buying wood will never be good for your map cause i cant think of any map with more gold than wood...
Then we need to consider the fact that vils need to walk from a resource to the other if you switch them, which makes the market a bit more appealing.
And finally, the fact that you can buy exactly 100 wood makes it perfect for macro. Of course, a good macro can make you chop exactly 100 wood as well, but some times you get housed and you have to get a house so fast, and then buying 100 wood enables you to do this perfectly. Always better to have a perfect macro ofc, but no one does.

So Id say on a high food map it can be good to sell food at start. Lets say you have 2 bison hunts, and you make a french musk/cav build. If you sell food 9 times, you will get 75 + 74 + 73 + 72 + 72 + 71 + 70 + 69 + 69 coin (I tried) while 100 food is always worth 60 coin. So you basically earn 15 + 14 + 13 + 12 + 12 + 11 + 10 + 9 + 9 = 105 free coin. And overall, you got 645 coin, which is almost the 650 you need for 5 huss + 5 musks + steel traps. If you also consider you dont need placer mines anymore (for this first batch only, of course) because you dont mine any gold, you can save an extra 75f + 75w. Plus 105 gold, what does it mean ? Like an extra 1 huss 1 musk, right ? And if you got enough food to afford this, I cant see any drawback. And then you just use 700w for placer mines once you got the first batch out, and all is fine, isnt it ? You even avoided to chop 75w, using crates instead, which is always nice.

Im going to try this, to see if I really can get 5 musks/5 huss
Im not sure, but I think you calculated that 100 food is worth 60 gold if you have steel traps. But if you wanna gather it and sell it for french musk huss, you have to gather and sell it before you get steel traps. Its still viable, just a couple or so less than 9 times. A nice bonus tho is that as the gold you get/100f decreases, the food you get/100g increases, so later on if you need to buy food it wont be as bad of a trade as it would be initially. But ofc your enemy also benefits from this.

I calculated 100f is worth 60g if I have steel traps, but also if I have placer mines, which is not the case. And I get steel traps asap. Anyway, what matters is that I can get 5 musks + 5 huss doing this, without any drawback except Im gonna run out of hunts faster

Jaeger · Post by **Jaeger** » 10 Oct 2015, 12:06

kaiserklein wrote:
ovi12 wrote:Im not sure, but I think you calculated that 100 food is worth 60 gold if you have steel traps. But if you wanna gather it and sell it for french musk huss, you have to gather and sell it before you get steel traps. Its still viable, just a couple or so less than 9 times. A nice bonus tho is that as the gold you get/100f decreases, the food you get/100g increases, so later on if you need to buy food it wont be as bad of a trade as it would be initially. But ofc your enemy also benefits from this.
I calculated 100f is worth 60g if I have steel traps, but also if I have placer mines, which is not the case. And I get steel traps asap. Anyway, what matters is that I can get 5 musks + 5 huss doing this, without any drawback except Im gonna run out of hunts faster

Also you dont have placer mines, youre gonna have to gather unupgraded gold until you get it from 700w.

japanesegeneral · Post by **japanesegeneral** » 10 Oct 2015, 13:13

But ur doing the Samwise build anyways so u have to send 700w as ur first colonial shipment.

ESOC

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