Fattening and Decay Rate

[Interjection]

Today Zuta and I are recording a podcast and on it I wanted to talk to him about the lesser used parts of the game. e.g., bad politicians, bad cards, the saloon, training livestock.

So to better inform our discussion I did a quick experiment to see what the fattening rates of different livestock are. Got out my good ol' stopwatch and timed some animals. Here's what I found (seem image below). I haven't done yaks but I assume they will be identical it cows. Also didn't test anything other than sheep on the farm but I think we can assume it's the same as a pen.

I found the results quite interesting. I always knew cows and llamas fattened more quickly than sheep but I thought this was because all livestock take the same time to fully fatten. (So if a sheep takes 5 mins to fully fatten then a cow would also take 5 mins to fully fatten - except cows can reach 500f and sheep only 300f - so cows would clearly be better in terms of food per second). The results show that this is not the case.

Actually the results show llamas are the fastest fattening without a pen. And cows are the fastest fattening with a pen.

I also checked the decay rate, I only did this on one animal (a deer) but I assume it's the same for all animals including livestock. It's insane that the decay rate is almost the same as the pen's fattening rate! (Especially for sheep)

[Interjection]

I'll make a separate post to expand my discussion as this is now going one layer deeper.

So now that we know the fattening rates we can work out how valuable each livestock is in terms of villager seconds. (See image again)

So firstly, we know the villagers gather rates:
Livestock: 2 food/s
Hunts: 0.833 food/s
Hunts with hunting dogs & steel traps: 1.0829 food/s

So villagers gather livestock 0.9171 food per second faster than hunts (once we get the market techs).

Therefore a llama tasked to a pen generates almost exactly one villager's worth of value (more if you don't have market techs)

The trouble is it's not like having an extra vil gathering because you don't get the resources right away. You have to wait quite a while for it to fatten up sufficiently.

This isn't so bad when you get livestock for free. But in the case of training a sheep at a pen for example, it takes 5mins 47seconds for it to fully fatten (starts of at 50f so need to fatten 250f more). Each sheep is a 100f investment that takes nearly six minutes to pay off for a return of essentially 0.662 Villager Seconds. Just over half a settler. (And the bonus only lasts whilst gathering up the 300f carcass which is also effected by decay )

Conclusion. So we already knew training shipping livestock is bad.

But I'd like to think about what it would take to make them sort of worthwhile on occasion. Perhaps they could be cheaper, or the shipments more valuable. Or maybe the pen itself could be cheaper. What if pens slowly 'autotrained' sheep like Otto vils? Maybe EP could increase the 2f/s gather rate - It just seems too low in comparison to hunts especially once you have market techs. (or maybe the market techs could effect livestock too, or maybe the selective breeding tech could do more).

I wonder if training livestock could ever fit into our game as another way to boom - similar to a TP boom or something or if players could sneak in a couple of sheep early on as an adaptation to their opponent giving them some breathing room. I mostly like bringing these topics up because it's interesting and I'd to explore this with Zuta later today . I'll be checking this thread regularly today :)

[thomasgreen6]

I think to make livestock worthwhile you have to send too many cards. For example, playing as British requires: Team Wool Staple (livestock gather, generate xp and affect japan shrines 20% faster), Stock yards (30% faster fatten rate), Fulling Mills (300% faster gather rate from livestock) This, coupled with the fact that the livestock pen costs the same as a military building, means that in a standard sup game, the pay off will always be too slow/too expensive. I think there are some simple changes that can help try to fix some of these things:


Team wool Stock yards Fulling mills
staple

-Combine the homecity cards into 1 card, including perhaps the card that allows cows to be trained from livestock pens
-Decrease the cost of the livestock pen and the upgrade selective breeding (25% faster fattening)
-As you have already suggested changing some of the age 2 age up politicians might also help this, i.e the Naturalist


I think you have to bear in mind however that buffing the livestock pen gives players another source of safe reasonably fast food income. This might encourage people to simply play more defensive/boomy styles and sit back (more walls? Surely not ). Particularly on low hunt maps this could be a problem for civ balance and allowing civs that are hunt dependant to just ignore the map entirely. Either way, I wanna see more cowhax pls

[duckzilla]

I can't see how to boost the use of livestock without breaking the game. The british cards are already quite strong. In principle, you could just use 8 villagers constantly gathering at livestock pens to have the effect of 40 villagers gathering on usual mills. If gather rate cards are your thing, then it is definitely worth it to put the livestock cards in your deck as british, since you can just replace the other "faster gathering at mills"-cards with them.

If i interpret the cards correctly, fully upped british villagers gather at livestock with 2 * ( 1 + 3 (fulling mills) + 0.25 (Refrigeration) + 0.5 (imp. food upgrade)) = 9.5 food/sec. That's is nearly 9 times faster than a fully upped villagers gathering at mills with 0.468 * ( 1 + 0.15 (mill upgrade 1) + 0.3 (mill upgrade 2) + 0.15 (sustainable agriculture) + 0.25 (Refrigeration) + 0.5 (imp. food upgrade)) = 1.1 food/sec (for gather rates, see here: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=14218).
With all cards, both cows and sheep need around 4 minutes to fatten (a bit less I think, roughly 200-210 seconds). That means (please correct me if numbers are incorrect, I am not sure how many sheep/cows you can build) an investment of 20 * 80 + 30 * 100 = 1.600 + 3.000 = 4.600food gives you livestock worth 20 * 500 + 30 * 300 = 10.000 + 9.000 = 19.000 food after 4 minutes. Let's assume that decay does not play a role. Then, in order to gather efficiently without idle time, there should be no more villagers assigned to gather at livestock pens than the number which can gather the whole 19.000 food within 4 minutes. By continuously producing more livestock, the vills can be kept busy forever. The correct amount of villagers would be (19.000food/240 seconds)/9.5 food per sec = 8.33 villagers. Taking the initial investment into account, these villagers gather 19.000 - 4.600 = 14.400 food in 4 minutes. Which is equivalent to an effective gather rate of (14.400 food/ 240 seconds ) / 8.33 villagers = 7.5 food/sec (per villager). Let's assume that decay eats away 20% of this (which it does not), then we still have 6 food/sec and this number is calculated quite conservatively.
Hence, using the 4 livestock upgrade cards the british have results in 8 villagers gathering as fast as at least 48 fully upgraded villagers on mills. I would not even recommend sending Refrigeration in this setup.

[HUMMAN]

Rather than livestock buff in some maps you can begin with livestock(and ofc herdables around map.) also politican already buffed i believe? 8 cows?

[edeholland]

For reference, here are the actual values, so you don't have to time it.

Keep in mind the animal training times as well. A sheep takes 10 seconds to spawn, cow takes 15 seconds, and a llama takes a full minute to spawn.

	Sheep		Llama		Cow
Cards/upgrades	Food/sec	Time to fatten (sec)	Food/sec	Time to fatten (sec)	Food/sec	Time to fatten (sec)
No Livestock Pen / Farm	0.200	1,250	0.300	1,167	0.250	1,800
Livestock Pen/Farm	0.700	357	1.050	333	1.250	360
Livestock Pen / Farm & Selective Breeding	0.825	303	1.238	283	1.500	300
Livestock Pen / Farm & Stockyards	0.850	294	1.275	275	1.550	290
Livestock Pen / Farm & Sel. Breed & Stockyards	0.975	256	1.463	239	1.800	250
Livestock Pen / Farm & Sel. Breed & Stockyards & Navajo	1.125	222	1.688	207	2.100	214
Livestock Pen / Farm & Sel. Breed & Stockyards & Navajo & TEAM Wool	1.225	204	1.838	190	2.300	196

[momuuu]

Aoe3 strategizes are relatively shortterm oriented: once you have to leave your base for hunts/mines you have to have a competitive army. Even beyond the fact that you will also die to a rush doing livestock, this makes livestock unviable; the time it takes for livestock to actually start paying off is just too large for a sup game.

That being said, in treaty it is worth it. Its actually a net positive investment, even compared to other possible investments. Its just waaaaaaaay too slow for sup games as it basically requires you to invest all your resources into it before it starts paying off.

Would be fun to try this on very defensive maps, like maybe 3v3 texas. Still probably wont work as the time scale of those maps is too small. I dont even think its worth it in nr20 for example, and in nr40 its basically only really worthwhile for brits and iro I think (although I could be wrong). In nr60 its possibly worth it for all civs with reasonable cards to livestock boom.

Honestly, you can safely buff livestock rn. Even if it paid off much faster its still way too slow.

[deleted_user0]

i was thinking that it might actually be good vs water boom.

[thomasgreen6]

i was thinking that it might actually be good vs water boom.

Kynesie watch out

[momuuu]

i was thinking that it might actually be good vs water boom.

In theory it could be, but its probably still too slow.

However, I can see how you will be stealing games off of kynesie because he will just happily sit back behinds a bunch of walls and not actually punish you for your treaty boom.

[Garja]

Thing is some of the stuff in this game is made for treaty. Livestock boom is totally viable in treaty. It can also be viable in sup when the situation makes up for the disavantages, so I think it's fine the way it is. Whenever you drop a pen for your starting herdables I think you can continue with a livestock boom if you want to. If anything, livestock would be more relevant if maps had less hunts.

[momuuu]

I dont think livestock booming ends up being worth it at all if you dont go for cards. At best its a bad eco investment, at worst I think you dont even get profit.

[deleted_user0]

dunno, if you get livestock for free, it's ok to reinvest, I feel. often if I get for example 7 sheep, I eat the sheep and then I reinvest 500f of that 2100 food I get from the sheep into 5 new sheep. and keep it going like that. but yeah, as making that your main food income, you definitely need cards.

[Garja]

Well, livestock is a way to address the lack of hunts. It doesn't generate net resources in a appreciable way in supremacy. So it's not comparable to like market ups for hunts or some sort of other investment (trade route, fish boom). It should be compared to mills. Rarely, under some circumstances, it generates an appreciable amount of net resources (need many starting herdables and at least one card).

[momuuu]

dunno, if you get livestock for free, it's ok to reinvest, I feel. often if I get for example 7 sheep, I eat the sheep and then I reinvest 500f of that 2100 food I get from the sheep into 5 new sheep. and keep it going like that. but yeah, as making that your main food income, you definitely need cards.

The problem is that the investment doesn't actually pay off much; looking at it as 2100 free food is not really the correct way. 5 sheep will end up at 1500 food that gathers at 2.00 food per second if I am not mistaken. Compared to hunts with steel traps which gather at 1.09 food per second. So for simplicity, lets say that herdables are collected at twice the rate. The 1500 food will then be gathered in a timeslot where 750 food would be gathered from hunts. You gain 750 food by gathering them, however notice that you did invest 500 food. That means that you only gained 250 food, assuming there is no decay rate at all. I am not sure on the details of the decay rate, but I believe that the animals actually decay pretty quickly, thus harming the food gained (I think overall it barely ends up being profitable due to this)

Also, it takes a long time for this investment to pay off; according to interjection's calculations it takes 357 seconds for the sheep to fatten, so almost 6! minutes. 6 minutes is an eternity in aoe3. The fact that you're down 500 food for six minutes is probably never worth the 250 food profit you get in ideal circumstances (rounding down gathering rate for hunts and ignoring decay of sheep).

Compared to mills, the sheeps are actually a bit more profitable; with the first mill upgrade, mills have a ~0.77 food/second gather rate. In this case you will gather 1500 food in a timeslot where a mill player gathers only 577 food. The profit is 423 food. It also probably requires you to not build as many mills. However, the production of just 5 sheep is really low compared to even 10 villagers on a mill; in 357 seconds 10 villagers on a mill gather 2741 food. These 5 sheep only provide enough food for half a mill. You could actually invest in the upgrades for the pens and get more sheeps every round, and this might actually be viable in a very stale lategame scenario. However, the investment becomes larger and larger and even in lategame the games are still relatively cutthroat. Investing 1500 food+ (this is enough for the equivalent of 15 villagers on food) could easily lead to you being overrun in the short term. However, I do actually think it could be worth it in scenarios were you have the resources to spare and have transitioned to mills. However, once you actually also get the age 3 upgrade for mills (which you should have in these scenarios) the mill gather rate is almost equivalent to the hunt gather rate. In that case you're again only getting about a 250 food profit every 500 food you invest.

The breakeven point for this investment is when the food gather rate reaches 1.5 food per second (assuming no decay, which might actually be a big deal). In imperial with all basic upgrades the mill gathering rate actually reaches 1.3 food per second, almost nullifying the return rate for sheeps. At this point I severely doubt sheeping up is worth it anymore. I also fear that the scenario where you can actually spare 500++ food for 6 minutes almost never happens when players are not in imperial with most upgrades already (after all, aging up to imperial or getting a crucial imperial upgrade earlier than the opponent is gamewinning; it will punish the 500f investment).

It's theoretically profitable, however the investment is EXTREMELY slow. In my opinion, it is too slow for almost any supremacy game to be worth it. A 500 food investment should pay off much faster than it does with livestock.

PS. Does anyone know the details on the decay rate? How much food should be expected to be lost for every animal.

EDIT: The decay rate was tested by inter actually, it's 0.775/s. Assuming perfect sheep micro where we gather with say 5 vills per sheep (that seems a reasonable amount with regards to bumping villagers), 5 vills will take 300/(5*2) = 30 seconds to gather a sheep. That sheep will then lose 30*0.775 = 23.25 food. Thus, 5 sheep only give 1500-(5*23.25) ~ 1400 food. This is if the sheep are gathered perfectly. More reasonably, you might forget to actually micro then and some vills will start killing sheep for no reason. If you were to average 2.5 vills per sheep at any time, you are getting 1300 food out of your sheep. At this point, compared to hunts which will give you 650 food by the time you gather up the sheep, you are only getting 150 food profit. You would actually be losing money compared to imperial mills. This effect is very significant. Even with amazing micro, you're going from 250 food profit to 200 food profit compared to hunts and you are still losing money compared to imperial mills.

[edeholland]

Decay rates:

Sheep

Settlers	Food Gathered	Food Wasted	Time (Sec)
1	218	82	109.1
2	253	47	63.2
3	267	33	44.4
4	274	26	34.3
5	279	21	27.9

Llama

Settlers	Food Gathered	Food Wasted	Time (Sec)
1	291	109	145.5
2	337	63	84.2
3	356	44	59.3
4	366	34	45.7
5	372	28	37.2

Cow

Settlers	Food Gathered	Food Wasted	Time (Sec)
1	364	136	181.8
2	421	79	105.3
3	444	56	74.1
4	457	43	57.1
5	465	35	46.5

[deleted_user0]

dunno, if you get livestock for free, it's ok to reinvest, I feel. often if I get for example 7 sheep, I eat the sheep and then I reinvest 500f of that 2100 food I get from the sheep into 5 new sheep. and keep it going like that. but yeah, as making that your main food income, you definitely need cards.

The problem is that the investment doesn't actually pay off much; looking at it as 2100 free food is not really the correct way. 5 sheep will end up at 1500 food that gathers at 2.00 food per second if I am not mistaken. Compared to hunts with steel traps which gather at 1.09 food per second. So for simplicity, lets say that herdables are collected at twice the rate. The 1500 food will then be gathered in a timeslot where 750 food would be gathered from hunts. You gain 750 food by gathering them, however notice that you did invest 500 food. That means that you only gained 250 food, assuming there is no decay rate at all. I am not sure on the details of the decay rate, but I believe that the animals actually decay pretty quickly, thus harming the food gained (I think overall it barely ends up being profitable due to this)

Also, it takes a long time for this investment to pay off; according to interjection's calculations it takes 357 seconds for the sheep to fatten, so almost 6! minutes. 6 minutes is an eternity in aoe3. The fact that you're down 500 food for six minutes is probably never worth the 250 food profit you get in ideal circumstances (rounding down gathering rate for hunts and ignoring decay of sheep).

Compared to mills, the sheeps are actually a bit more profitable; with the first mill upgrade, mills have a ~0.77 food/second gather rate. In this case you will gather 1500 food in a timeslot where a mill player gathers only 577 food. The profit is 423 food. It also probably requires you to not build as many mills. However, the production of just 5 sheep is really low compared to even 10 villagers on a mill; in 357 seconds 10 villagers on a mill gather 2741 food. These 5 sheep only provide enough food for half a mill. You could actually invest in the upgrades for the pens and get more sheeps every round, and this might actually be viable in a very stale lategame scenario. However, the investment becomes larger and larger and even in lategame the games are still relatively cutthroat. Investing 1500 food+ (this is enough for the equivalent of 15 villagers on food) could easily lead to you being overrun in the short term. However, I do actually think it could be worth it in scenarios were you have the resources to spare and have transitioned to mills. However, once you actually also get the age 3 upgrade for mills (which you should have in these scenarios) the mill gather rate is almost equivalent to the hunt gather rate. In that case you're again only getting about a 250 food profit every 500 food you invest.

The breakeven point for this investment is when the food gather rate reaches 1.5 food per second (assuming no decay, which might actually be a big deal). In imperial with all basic upgrades the mill gathering rate actually reaches 1.3 food per second, almost nullifying the return rate for sheeps. At this point I severely doubt sheeping up is worth it anymore. I also fear that the scenario where you can actually spare 500++ food for 6 minutes almost never happens when players are not in imperial with most upgrades already (after all, aging up to imperial or getting a crucial imperial upgrade earlier than the opponent is gamewinning; it will punish the 500f investment).

It's theoretically profitable, however the investment is EXTREMELY slow. In my opinion, it is too slow for almost any supremacy game to be worth it. A 500 food investment should pay off much faster than it does with livestock.

PS. Does anyone know the details on the decay rate? How much food should be expected to be lost for every animal.

EDIT: The decay rate was tested by inter actually, it's 0.775/s. Assuming perfect sheep micro where we gather with say 5 vills per sheep (that seems a reasonable amount with regards to bumping villagers), 5 vills will take 300/(5*2) = 30 seconds to gather a sheep. That sheep will then lose 30*0.775 = 23.25 food. Thus, 5 sheep only give 1500-(5*23.25) ~ 1400 food. This is if the sheep are gathered perfectly. More reasonably, you might forget to actually micro then and some vills will start killing sheep for no reason. If you were to average 2.5 vills per sheep at any time, you are getting 1300 food out of your sheep. At this point, compared to hunts which will give you 650 food by the time you gather up the sheep, you are only getting 150 food profit. You would actually be losing money compared to imperial mills. This effect is very significant. Even with amazing micro, you're going from 250 food profit to 200 food profit compared to hunts and you are still losing money compared to imperial mills.

a whole wall of text, but the most important thing is just this: Compared to mills, the sheeps are actually a bit more profitable

The point is not to go sheep instead of hunts, the point is to go sheep so you can stretch your hunts for longer before you have to go mills.

[Garja]

Instead of going mills I'd say

[ChewSick]

If anything, livestock would be more relevant if maps had less hunts.

kinda hard to tell. training sheep/cows is super food heavy and they only pay off 5-6 minutes later, idk.

[Interjection]

Actually, @deleted_user to summarise Jerom's argument (why are you called momuu now?) his point is

"In imperial with all basic upgrades the mill gathering rate actually reaches 1.3 food per second, almost nullifying the return rate for sheeps. At this point I severely doubt sheeping up is worth it anymore. I also fear that the scenario where you can actually spare 500++ food for 6 minutes almost never happens when players are not in imperial with most upgrades already (after all, aging up to imperial or getting a crucial imperial upgrade earlier than the opponent is gamewinning; it will punish the 500f investment)."

Very basically: it's never worth investing in sheep, especially early in the game as you won't get anything back for ~6mins. It might be worth it in the very very late game but actually it isn't because fully upgraded mills are better and significantly less micro intensive.

______________

I don't think that livestock should be thought of as a totally alternative food income which can replace hunts / mills. I think that any kind of buff should aim to make livestock something where, if you think you can get away with it, you can sneak in 2 or 3 sheep to edge out a slight advantage later. Basically an alternative way to boom. Trouble is they're just so expensive at the moment and take so long fatten.

I don't think livestock should be relegated to treaty. Pens were in the original game before treaty even became a thing.

Obviously any change would need to not break the game in combination with those cards.

[duckzilla]

A sheep takes 10 seconds to spawn, cow takes 15 seconds, and a llama takes a full minute to spawn.

	Sheep		Llama		Cow
Cards/upgrades	Food/sec	Time to fatten (sec)	Food/sec	Time to fatten (sec)	Food/sec	Time to fatten (sec)
Livestock Pen / Farm & Sel. Breed & Stockyards & Navajo & TEAM Wool	1.225	204	1.838	190	2.300	196

So, if I understand this correctly, Llamas are in fact entire crap, given that you have to send a card to be able to produce them?
I see that llamas cost only 70f compared to cows 80f. But on the other hand, they fatten slower and to a lower level. Is there any other benefit to llamas that I do not see?

[duckzilla]

Actually, @deleted_user to summarise Jerom's argument (why are you called momuu now?) his point is

"In imperial with all basic upgrades the mill gathering rate actually reaches 1.3 food per second, almost nullifying the return rate for sheeps. At this point I severely doubt sheeping up is worth it anymore. I also fear that the scenario where you can actually spare 500++ food for 6 minutes almost never happens when players are not in imperial with most upgrades already (after all, aging up to imperial or getting a crucial imperial upgrade earlier than the opponent is gamewinning; it will punish the 500f investment)."

This final gathering rate of 1.3 is wrong. It is likely to be based on the "official" gathering rate of 0.67 for mills, which is incorrect as it does not take into account villagers running around. As shown here, https://eso-community.net/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=14218, the highest possible gathering rate for europeans is 1.19f/s and this is only after sending every single upgrade card from the home city. Basic mill upgrades + imperial upgrade only yield 0.91f/s, which is significantly lower than sheep gathering rate.

[Garja]

If anything, livestock would be more relevant if maps had less hunts.

kinda hard to tell. training sheep/cows is super food heavy and they only pay off 5-6 minutes later, idk.

That's irrelevant to my point tho. Less hunt = you need means to get food. More hunts = you just use hunts.

[Interjection]

That's interesting that the top mill rate w/o cards is 0.91 f/s. I still think though Jerom's point stands.

[Mitoe]

If buffing livestock is the question here, isn't it simplest way just to change hunting dogs and steel traps to also affect livestock?