Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

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Great Britain I_HaRRiiSoN_I
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Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

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Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

Hi guys back again for another economic mini-investigation. First of all I just want to put on paper how much I enjoyed my time at the NWC LAN, especially getting to meet many players of the community. As someone who is kinda around but not really in the community it was so nice to meet you all and that everybody was in a great mood throughout. If you found this kinda interesting and you want to read my previous articles then see the links below.

Sioux Exponential Stats
https://eso-community.net/viewtopic.php ... 54#p358254
EP Patch 1 dock Schooners vs no Schooners Visualisation
https://eso-community.net/viewtopic.php ... 72#p363372

Overview
Players are able to buy and sell resources at the market with a starting price of 125 buy / 75 sell. It is common knowledge from best to worst is buying wood, selling food, buying food, selling wood. Selling wood is an absolute last resource if you are in desperate need for coin. The reason for this is that food {Base hunt = 0.84 f/s} has a higher base gather rate than coin {0.6 c/s), and coin has a higher base gather rate than wood {0.5 w/s}. This means that if one villager gathered each resource for 1 minute then the total resources collected are 50.4 food, 36 coin and 30 wood. Although the resources differ in value they are all said to be equal in value in terms of Villager seconds, the virtue resource of villagers spent doing stuff like gathering or building.

We will see in a bit more details about the various combinations of gather rates due to market techs but if at the start of the game I had a market with no techs researched and I sold 100 food for 75 coin, i will have taken 25 resources off the map and would have ended up with less resource than I had started off with. However it turns out that I have made an efficient trade as I have gained in this virtue resource of villager seconds. This is because 1 villager will gather 100 food faster than if 1 villager gathered 75 coin. What this means in terms of your economy is that by the time the coin villager has mined 75 coin, the food villager has gathered 105 food or gathered 100 food and started doing a separate task as an example.

Investigation Objective
This opens up the question, can i better use a market to maximise the virtue resource of villager seconds by gathering more food than coin (than compared to a typical 1v1 game) and selling the excess into coin? Note I am not suggesting sending every villager to hunt and have no miners but in some of the EP maps and for some civs, there is an easy availability of hunts and also a comparative lack of mines (or that some civs burn through their mines at a faster rate due to army compositions). The answer is less impressive than you think but it adds an extra string to your bow early game.

Number Crunching + Comments

No Hunt Upgrades / no Coin Upgrades
Villager second selling 100 food for 75 coin = +6.0 vill seconds or +3.6 coin equivalent
Last Sell price before the process becomes inefficient = 72 coin
Nothing to shout about here, very meagre returns and you would be better off gathering resources as normal to maximise resource gathered in the safety of your Town centre. If you are going for an early market + hunting dogs then it is ok to sell food and buy wood on a coin start to save on villager seconds of chopping a tree.

Hunting Dogs (+10% on base) / no Coin Upgrades
Villager second selling 100 food for 75 coin = +10.1 vill seconds or +6.0 coin equivalent
Last Sell price before the process becomes inefficient = 65 coin
Considering that placer mines costs 75 food and 75 wood, it may be worthwhile selling a few batches of food for coin before investing in placer mines and more villagers on the mines. (I feel this be utilised better for the low eco starts of russia/sioux as food is their primary resource compared to coin, thinking of vills/rusketeers for russia and axe riders for sioux.)

Steel traps (+30% on base) / no Coin Upgrades
Villager second selling 100 food for 75 coin = +20.1 vill seconds or +12.0 coin equivalent
Last Sell price before the process becomes inefficient = 55 coin.
Now i know what you are going to say, if I have invested in steel traps then I am going to investing in placer mines... I see that is very much true but is here for completion sake. Could be useful if you are going for early steel traps and need to prioritise wood investment in to trading post's, houses military buildings while there are a small amount of villagers on coin (like <6 vills, just a guess)

No Hunt Upgrades / Placer mines (+10%)
Just don't do this.

Hunting Dogs (+10% on base) / Placer mines (+10%)
Villager second selling 100 food for 75 coin = +3.2 vill seconds or +1.9 coin equivalent
Last Sell price before the process becomes inefficient = 72 coin
Very similar the no-uprade(s) sell rate except you have invested into getting placer mines so can be used a few time to help get that important batch of units but is not a noticeable eco benefit.

Steel traps (+30% on base) / Placer mines (+10%)
Villager second selling 100 food for 75 coin = +13.2 vill seconds or +7.9 coin equivalent
Last Sell price before the process becomes inefficient = 61 coin
The sell price hear maybe slightly lower than what people had imagined. This is because steel traps is +30% (10% + 20%) on the base gather rate of hunts (base = 0.84 f/s) which in itself is a faster gathering resource than coin (base = 0.6 c/s) with the +10% gather rate. It is worth noting at this point (ST and PM) that food as a resource gathers 65% faster than coin is gathered. The market does not take into consideration gather rates but the buying and selling are fixed prices, hence why the minimum efficient sell may seem to be lower than expected. I can see this being useful for strategies like 5 hussar semi or for when Germany wants to make use of the steel traps upgrade better, (sometimes for me i have more vills on coin even though there is more tech/resources invested into the food gather rate).

Things to Consider

    If you burn through hunts too fast, {sell to the minimum efficient price} then you will have lost that eco advantage if you haven't correctly herded hunts to your town due to lost villager seconds of many vills walking far to hunts.

    This could save you from gathering from an unsafe gold mine that little bit earlier, delays the point when you have to momentarily stop mining gold naturally.

    These last sell price numbers are only correct if you have already gathered n*100 food with the HD/ST researched otherwise you are selling food which was gathered before the gather rate was increased.

    You can sell though the minimum efficiency price if needed as the losses start off to be small however I don't see this happening in a real game scenario due limited hunts, coin crates, raiding + other factors etc..

Not game changing I know, but who knows the next semi-ff German strat could be called the 10-uhlan 5 market sell with steel traps semi-ff lol. Russia could age up with 500 food and then start selling food gathered from hunt for a possibly larger musketeer mass than before for a more agressive build (mix in 300wood instead of distributism if you are really going on the offensive). Germany/France may not need to gather their opponents 2nd/3rd mine as quickly.

Full list of data available in the attached excel sheet.

Cheers,
H :biggrin:
Attachments
Selling Food for Coin.xlsx
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Canada Mitoe
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by Mitoe »

@Kaiserklein I didn't read the thread but--shit, they've figured out the real secret to the Samwise 5 5 build.
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

@I_HaRRiiSoN_I Funny thing is that I was wondering about that in this topic https://eso-community.net/viewtopic.php ... 30#p375330

You too op mate ;)
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Mitoe wrote:@Kaiserklein I didn't read the thread but--shit, they've figured out the real secret to the Samwise 5 5 build.

Kaiser made a post about this in a French forum 3 years ago. You can indeed get 5/5 every time, that's nice on no TP maps.
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:@I_HaRRiiSoN_I Funny thing is that I was wondering about that in this topic https://eso-community.net/viewtopic.php ... 30#p375330


Did you literally just make that thread? that is quite a coincidence, I may look at some of those points as they do appear to be interesting. I make may an ammendment for the advanced market which i think has its uses but uses a card in a very important part of the game.

You too op mate ;)


Turns out I take it after you I guess....
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

If you have time, can you do this for the Dutch villagers buddy? ;)
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

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Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

i'll send you a copy with the coin gather rate changed to 0.69 tomorrow but im off to bed now, i dont think it will provide any useful results as its likely that there will be very few efficient trades due to gold gather rate increase, the question would more likely be can you incoporate a market in a build order to buy wood (either for banks or possibly instead of shipping 600 wood)
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by Riotcoke »

Thanks for the enciteful thread
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by VooDoo_BoSs »

What is 5/5 build?
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by Djigit »

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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by Kaiserklein »

I didn't read it all, but I remember doing the maths quite a while ago and finding that it's very good to sell food when you have steel traps. You have to be careful not to fuck your hunts too much though, so it's best for a civ like germany which is usually happy to have less food and more coin. You can do it with any civ early on to get better batches. After a while trading becomes inefficient anyway.

The best use of it is in age 1 when going market. I usually start by chopping the 50w as fr or ger, and then if I don't find any coin treasures after a while, I just sell 100f for 75g to buy the 100w. Not moving your vils from hunts and gathering an extra 100f with hunting dogs before aging is easily more efficient than having walking time to the gold mine and mining 75g without placer mines.
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by Ashvin »

VooDoo_BoSs wrote:What is 5/5 build?

5 (cav) from stable and 5 (musks) from rax at the same time as france (usually used on non TP maps). You use all 400w fr0om age up to make stable and rax, queue 1 huss and 1 musk (in that order) and send 700w for housing.
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by Kawapasaka »

Is 5/5 possible doing every step of the build order asap? Even with a great start I could only ever get like 5/3 at best. Are you supposed to delay building the rax/stable or delay queuing the first unit or something?
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Kawapasaka wrote:Is 5/5 possible doing every step of the build order asap? Even with a great start I could only ever get like 5/3 at best. Are you supposed to delay building the rax/stable or delay queuing the first unit or something?

It requires a very good macro. If you sell food for coin, then you should get 5/5 every time however.
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by Snuden »

I thought OP had opened a restaurant or something.
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by Mitoe »

Kawapasaka wrote:Is 5/5 possible doing every step of the build order asap? Even with a great start I could only ever get like 5/3 at best. Are you supposed to delay building the rax/stable or delay queuing the first unit or something?

With good treasures, yes, and with exceptionally good herding / villager efficiency. Otherwise, no. Usually you will build the stable before the barracks as well just because hussars take longer than musketeers to train, but you will still miss out on a couple of units without good treasures usually.
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by tedere12 »

I always get 5/4 no matter what so I guess delaying batches or selling gives 5/5 easy
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Re: Mathematical Look at Selling Food for Coin

Post by Kaiserklein »

Getting 5/5 without selling food or delaying batches is very rare tbh. If you age 13, you can't. If you don't get really good treasures, you can't. If you built a tp on 200w start, you can't. And then you also need to macro perfectly and have a perfect herding
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