Hitting the Stagecoach Jackpot!

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Great Britain I_HaRRiiSoN_I
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Hitting the Stagecoach Jackpot!

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Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

Thanks for clicking on this catchy Click-Bait title however there is some useful information below instead of just a headline title.
I have a few more of these planned as well as a special request from somebody but may take some time to get round to these.

Overview
In a TP heavy meta there is many discussions on how to balance the civs, maps, TP's to try and balance the game so that every civ is possible on every map. This thread is going to ignore that completely and answer the question, when is the best time to upgrade TP Stagecoach? I have always known that there is a sweet spot but have never put this down to paper, looking at high level streams i see that stagecoach is researched usually when it fits into the build order they are going for but have not considered where the travois is when they click to research the stagecoach upgrade.

Investigation
I picked a few TP heavy maps where full control is feasibly possible but note only a small sample was used. Fear not though these results can be extrapolated for all maps at any time - hopefully. I built TP's on all the slots and made sure I got LOS at the start of the TP route aswell and made a note of how long it takes for the travois to complete a single loop and pass each TP. A few resets on each map suggest that the trade routes on EP are near exact for each spawn of the map (unless the map itself differs like manchuria TP spawns).

What Happens When Stagecoach is Researched
Stagecoach is the level 2 upgrade for the trade route found on many maps. It costs 200 food and 200 wood to research and importantly takes 60 seconds to research. The fact that this takes 1 min to research makes memorising or quickly calculating these values in the discovery age quite possible.

The primary effect of stagecoach is to increase the speed of the travois, give line of site to players who have a TP slot on the upgraded TP line, and allow the bounty to give either XP or resources. Although the amount given for each TP pass is the same, the fact that the travois' speed has increased by 75% means over time, more resources/XP is netted.

EDIT: A Calculation of stagecoach speed suggests speed increases by 75% instead of 50%, calculation shown in appendix.

The secondary effect is the interesting one. Lets consider a simple trade route containing a single trading post so that there is a start point, a middle TP and an end point. We will also assume that the time it takes for the discovery travois to complete a single pass is 60 seconds. When the stagecoach improvement is complete, the current TP pass is stopped and the XP bounty is immediately given to the TP slots which the discovery travois has yet to pass but NOT to the TP's which have already been passed.
EDIT: LOS of the travois only applies to Euro civs but not TWC/TAD civs, credit @Riotcoke

This gives a sliding scale for our little set up. Best case scenario the travois has just spawned to start another pass when the improvement comes in. The player immediately gets given the middle TP bounty (i reckon it is ~70XP for a 60 second TP loop time) and the stagecoach restarts from the start of the trade route. Also worth noting there is added bonus of the stagecoach moves fast than the discovery travois so you may get extra TP slot passes as compared to researching at the end of a loop.

The worst case scenario is the improvement comes in at the end of the trade route. The travois has passed the TP slot and so no XP bounty is immediately given to the player. The discovery travois stops just short of the end of the trade route and the stagecoach restarts from the start of the trade route. In short the is no extra 'bonus' as a result of the improvement coming in.

In this simple case it is easy to work out the sweet spot for the stagecoach upgrade. If the travois spwans at the start of the route at 0:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00..... and that the stagecoach tech takes 60 seconds to research, then the sweet spot to research the improvement is 3:02, 4:02, 5:02. 2 second cushion is just there for a bit of breathing space but doesn't mean anything.

How Much is this Worth on EP Maps?
Small sample size but gives an idea in game effect.

Please note that any errors in time for recorded for loop length and any discrepancies in the map spawn will magnify these errors as time goes on. Also researching stagecoach 10 seconds late is much much better than researching stagecoach 10 seconds early and these number are not 100% guaranteed.

UIx ESOC Arkansas
loop length: 48.5seconds
TP Bounty: 50XP
Number of TP's: 3
Jackpot value: 150XP
Jackpot times to click research Stagecoach.
00:04:43
00:05:32
00:06:21
00:07:10
00:07:59
00:08:48
00:09:37

UIx ESOC High Plains
loop length: 84 seconds
TP Bounty: 96XP
Number of TP's: 5
Jackpot value: 480XP
Jackpot times to click research Stagecoach.
00:04:36
00:06:00
00:07:24
00:08:48
00:10:12
00:11:36

UIx ESOC Arizona
loop length: 96 seconds
TP Bounty: 105XP
Number of TP's: 4
Jackpot value: 420XP
{for some reason it appears travois remains 'off' the map for like 15 seconds, I think a full 'jackpot' is awarded still if the travois if off the map, i.e. despawned at the end of the route.}
Jackpot times to click research Stagecoach.
00:05:24
00:07:00
00:08:36
00:10:12
00:11:48

UIx ESOC Baja California
loop length: 111 seconds
TP Bounty: 125XP
Number of TP's: 3
Jackpot value: 375XP
Jackpot times to click research Stagecoach.
00:04:33
00:06:24
00:08:15
00:10:06
00:11:57

Using this for Other Maps
See below graph relating to XP generation versus travois loop time, small sample data but if you know the TP XP bounty is 80XP then this linear graph predicts that the loop time is 73.1 seconds. If you have a calculator or an open excel sheet you can quickly work out sets of start times and thus sets of ideal times to research stagecoach upgrade by subtracting 60 seconds.
Note: I obviously endorse that this is done as homework before a game/tournament instead of working this out on the fly in game.

Cheers
Harrison

Appendix 1: Speed of stage coach.

considering Arkansas TP route, Discovery age travois takes 49 seconds to complete while the stage coach takes 28 seconds.

using speed formula speed = distance / time and setting the distance as an arbitrary figure as the length remains the same we will consider speed of discovery travois of s1 and speed of stagecoach s2.

s1 = 1 / 49 secs = 0.020408163
s2 = 1 / 28 secs = 0.035714286
comparing ratio of speeds,

s2/s1 = 1.75 therefore

s2 = 1.75 s1 i.e stagecoach travels 75% faster than discovery travois.

this means resources come in 75% faster (or the resource rate increased by 75%). For arkansas small trading route, discovery age TP's are worth the equivalent of 2.04 wood vills each (if TP's could generate wood) and stagecoach TP's are worth 3.57 wood vills each when TP is set to gather wood.
Attachments
XP bounty for TP loop time 2.PNG
XP bounty for TP loop time.PNG
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Great Britain Riotcoke
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Re: Hitting the Stagecoach Jackpot!

Post by Riotcoke »

Just to clarify, line of sight for the trade post w/stagecoach is only for Euro civs, TAD and TWC civs do not get the line of sight from the stagecoach.
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Great Britain I_HaRRiiSoN_I
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Re: Hitting the Stagecoach Jackpot!

Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

Never knew that, I always wondered why sometimes I could/couldn't see the LOS
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Great Britain I_HaRRiiSoN_I
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Re: Hitting the Stagecoach Jackpot!

Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

Edit: added riotcokes input as well as speed comparison of stagecoach versus discovery travois including equivalent vill gathering
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Re: Hitting the Stagecoach Jackpot!

Post by Scroogie »

That's pretty interesting, thanks for sharing!
Me being slightly ahead vs H2O: Image
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Great Britain I_HaRRiiSoN_I
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Re: Hitting the Stagecoach Jackpot!

Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

I forgot to mention that this extra bounty of XP is extremely useful as players are highly likely to switch from XP to resources as soon as the improvement comes in, thus this bonus XP should hopefully extend the effect of having TP's generate XP while they gather other resources.

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