Livestock boom vs Water boom

[Artyfeusz]

I was watching some tournament games, played by Kynesie, and wonder why is it that you can build 4 layers wall to water boom, but you can't do the same for livestock?
Obviously, there are few civs you can consider doing that, and even trying to compare it, as only 3 civs (Iro, China, Brits) have "fulling mills" card, that increases gather rate from herdable x4 (from 2.0 to 8.0 per sec.)
Out of 3 civs China has 50% penalty on fattening for village, up to age 3, and then 25% penalty up to age 4.
Iroquis got 25% penalty, and Brit got no penalty.
Although i literally have never seen, anybody doing that, either in my games or tournaments.

Some would argue that:
1) You can't invest in livestock, because you'll simply die to rush

Well, if that was true, it would be true for water boom as well, you have to invest 200 wood to build docks, then send card for cheaper fish boats, then 40 wood (80 VS) for each fish boat, and although investment is worth it (?) because it seems that walls can stop pretty much every single rush (at least in RE).

2) You waste VS to build wall

1 piece of wall takes 5 seconds to build, and probly around 1 sec to move from piece to piece, so it's ~6 sec per piece. Which makes 10 pieces of wall 60 VS and 50 (~80 wood). To fully secure area lets suppose we need 20 pieces, that means around 160 wood - 320 VS "lost". For comparison, 1 musket is 75 food (90 VS) and 25 coin (37 VS) which makes him around 127 VS. Basicly walling off completly base is equivlent of less than 3 musks.




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In both cases, we need to invest money, and up to certain point it was not worth, for boat it looks like:

We need to invest in at least 1 card (cheaper boats), though most of players would invest in at least 3 cards.
Even after fish boat costs 40 wood it is worth 80 VS
Fish boat gathers at rate 0.67 meat per second, villager in 80 seconds is able to produce around 64 food, so fish boat will pay for itself after around 95 seconds + training time (25 seconds)+ time needed to get into fish spot.

Now for livestock boom it looks like this:

First i'll consider Brits, since they are best for livestock boom early on (no penalty on fattening, cows able to train, fulling mills).
In case of water boom as well as livestock boom we need to spend 200 wood for dock / livestock pen, so there is not a huge difference.
Now after using ranching card from HC (equivlent of cheaper boats in water boom case?), we can train cows from livestock pen, they cost 80 food (96 VS, which is 16 more expensive than boat), and start with 50 food, they train 15 seconds (10 seconds faster than boats)
Without any upgrades cow fattens on livestock at speed of 75 food / 60 seconds (1,25 f/s).

Now where is the point it was worth? After we get "fulling mills" card from HC, villagers gather food from herdable 8 time faster than from huntable. Obviously for herdable there is a lot more walking, that in huntable case, so for fully fattened cows (500 meat) it is gonna be around 7 times faster than gathering from huntable, while for barely fattened cows (150 meat) its gonna be closer to 4-5 times faster.

Considering we can't wait for cow to fully fatten, and it only makes it 5 times faster than huntable, to get back our investment, we need cow to have 5/4 * 80 + decay.
That means if we gather from cow in around 8 seconds, decay will be 6, cow needs to be 106 food around, so that we got our 80 food back.
(we gather 100 from cow, in comparison to 20 that we 'd gather from huntable).
So Cow pays off for itself after 56 food (needed to fatten) / 1.25 (fatten rate) + 15 seconds (train time) = 44,8 seconds + 15 = 60 seconds.

Just to compare:
Return on Investment time for cow is 60 seconds, compared to >120 sec for boat.

Now considering we would keep that speed of gathering (never letting it fully fat, to get closer to that 8 times faster paper speed) around 5 times faster than from huntables.
Each 1.25 food of cow's fat is worth 1 food - decay for us, that makes cows way faster in gathering than boat (50% faster) and even faster than villager (20-25% faster).


One important thing, is that vill and boat can generate infinite amount of resources, while cow at the end will die, and cease to generate it.
So we need to move slightly return on investment time from cow, from point where it was just paying 80 food, to point when it is gonna generate 80 food for itself, 80 food for next cow. Otherwise it could be treated only as a short term investment= buy 10 cows, let them fatten up to 150 food, kill it [4/5 - decay(not really significant)] is ours, and then for investing 200 wood we have profit of 400 food, then if we invested in another group of cows we ' d be -400 food

But still, even after this, cow seems better investment than boat (at least for Brits), since our profit is 4/5 of food on cow, that means again 160 *5/4 = 200 food on cow.
With 1.25 fatten rate its gonna achieve it by 120 seconds (slightly faster than boat, and without risk of being shot down).

Livestock boom also seems great for timing attacks, if we would consider it as a short term investment, when we just wanna produce 1 group of cows and cease to produce them. With 10 cows fattened at around 200 food, we have 2000 food *4/5 = 1600 food, which is 800 food of profit, after 120 seconds of spending our 800 food.

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Tactics that include livestock could be even more powerful with Iroquis, who have slightly slower fatten rate (1f per sec), but can get farm from starting travois, can have early TP on to get additional transport (protection against rush / faster fattening rate) and make 2 warhuts for protection from 2 travois after aging, to let their cow boom their economy properly.

Or even get cows before aging and then use 30 seconds age up +1 travois to let cow fatten earlier on.


Other civs i won't consider, since China has very slow base fatten rate ( 0.75 f/ sec)
and any other doesn't have "fulling mills" card.

[deleted_user]

Water boom pays off much faster than livestock boom with less investment and it's easier to execute.

I think this is trying to make it a maths thing when playing should give you the answer you're looking for.

[UpMySleeves]

I'm not going to read all that text but I'd add to what Callen [correctly] wrote that you also get a coin source on water which livestock can't give. I guess livestock can't be contested like water can, but you're giving up the whole map for a worse boom so it doesn't matter.
Unless it gets a change, I think just making a pen/mill for the free animals on the map is the closest you'll get.

[Kazamkikaz]

simple, lifestock only pays off when you eat them while fishing boat is consistently giving you resources as long you have them working. When you are booming on water, your opponent has to decide between fight water or fight land by destroying layers of walls while with lifestock boom he just has to fight land.

[Artyfeusz]

Water boom pays off much faster than livestock boom with less investment and it's easier to execute.

I think this is trying to make it a maths thing when playing should give you the answer you're looking for.

Nope it's not, i mentioned it in post, you need 95 seconds of fishing +25 sec train + travel time to fish spot, for boat to pay off.
While cow pays for itself after it reaches around 110 food, which is around 50 seconds. It also gives opportunity to make timing attack, where you just invest 80*amount of cows food and want to get back 120*amount of cows after 70 seconds.

simple, lifestock only pays off when you eat them while fishing boat is consistently giving you resources as long you have them working. When you are booming on water, your opponent has to decide between fight water or fight land by destroying layers of walls while with lifestock boom he just has to fight land.

Ye that's the point, you re not really able to lose livestock battle, you can stop somebody from water boom, its really hard to stop him from livestock boom.
And applying pressure on land vs walls, means spending way more money on military than somebody who is livestock booming. Especially with Britain, since lb outrange every other unit available in colonial, therefore british player can have 1/3 VS value of enemy player and it will be enough to push him back.

Ye boats give you constant income, but until you have more of them, this income is really low, and not really significant, definetly not game changing, and by the time you produce lots of boats, you would already be gathering fruits of your livestock boom, which would give you way more resources than water boom by that time.
ALso it gives you opportunity to push right after that, while you can't just sell your boats, you are stuck with them.

I'm not going to read all that text but I'd add to what Callen [correctly] wrote that you also get a coin source on water which livestock can't give. I guess livestock can't be contested like water can, but you're giving up the whole map for a worse boom so it doesn't matter.
Unless it gets a change, I think just making a pen/mill for the free animals on the map is the closest you'll get.

More villagers to coin, then if you need it?
Worse boom? 800 food + 200 wood can give you 5000 k food - 800 - food potentially gathered from huntable, so its around 3,8-4k food, for 800 food, 200 wood and 6 mins time.
Equivlent of 800 food would be like 480 wood which is 5 fishing boats. After 6 mins your 5 fishing boats gather 1206 food - 800 (in VS, needed to produce them) gives you barely 400 food surplus, instead of 3,8-4k food surplus.

[UpMySleeves]

Have you ever tried it with success? The times I've played vs livestock boom[very few games], I had no problem outbooming with tps, securing map with tcs and winning.
Honestly I would love to see someone do this well, bring something different to the way the game is played. I saw Heroes trying it on his stream but never win.

If you turtle with walls your coin mine's going to run out.

[Artyfeusz]

Have you ever tried it with success? The times I've played vs livestock boom[very few games], I had no problem outbooming with tps, securing map with tcs and winning.
Honestly I would love to see someone do this well, bring something different to the way the game is played. I saw Heroes trying it on his stream but never win.

If you turtle with walls your coin mine's going to run out.

Ye i won some games by livestock boom, but i generally play more late game decks and try to turtle always with almost any civ.

Then maybe deck with advanced market, and selling stockpilled food for coin is the answer?

And also you can increase area walled, to continue culverin + skirm /lb / some range units play.
I always try to get herds close to my TC as close to it as soon as possible, to wall them inside.
So that i dont have to lose any VS during defense. It looks something like this :

[chronique]

On water you can make warships, that mean less investment to protect the water and the coast. Warships are absolutly broken on aoe3 (one of the most bad stuff never create by ESO).

[deleted_user]

I guess you've just discovered the secret to becoming OP then congrats on your new #1 because no one good will be convinced livestock boom is viable.

[Cometk]

I guess you've just discovered the secret to becoming OP then congrats on your new #1 because no one good will be convinced livestock boom is viable.

yo chill on the boy. Your time is better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve on what he’s doing (for whatever his skill level is/who he’s playing against) than making obvious unhelpful dunks. You might already know a livestock boom won’t work at the pro level but what use will dashing this mans effort do, in the long term?

[deleted_user]

My time is not better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve if my time is able to be said to be spent better at all. And if your time is able to be said to be spent better at all perhaps your time is better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve than making obvious unhelpful dunks.

[dansil92]

Have you ever tried it with success? The times I've played vs livestock boom[very few games], I had no problem outbooming with tps, securing map with tcs and winning.
Honestly I would love to see someone do this well, bring something different to the way the game is played. I saw Heroes trying it on his stream but never win.

If you turtle with walls your coin mine's going to run out.

I have tried it with dutch once reaching imperial (3v3, ffa, etc) to try to squeeze a bit more eco out of those 50 vills since livestock is about twice as fast gathering as mills but with the input cost and extra apm its... difficult to justify. Brits have the cards for it but the number of cards required is impossible to justify, when hunts take 0 cards and by all means, shipping advanced mills and 1000 wood will get you further anyways (not that that is what you should do but its 2 cards that can give more longterm eco). The team card is probably worth sending if you have a japan teammate or fulling mills on a like 3v3 mongolia where teammates all send you their water buffalo... other than that the livestock cards generally remain locked into treaty games

[chronique]

My time is not better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve if my time is able to be said to be spent better at all. And if your time is able to be said to be spent better at all perhaps your time is better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve than making obvious unhelpful dunks.

Your time is better spent at not responding in this thread maybe?

[deleted_user]

My time is not better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve if my time is able to be said to be spent better at all. And if your time is able to be said to be spent better at all perhaps your time is better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve than making obvious unhelpful dunks.

Your time is better spent at not responding in this thread maybe?

And ditto. See how this gets us nowhere?

[Sargsyan]

My time is not better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve if my time is able to be said to be spent better at all. And if your time is able to be said to be spent better at all perhaps your time is better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve than making obvious unhelpful dunks.

Your time is better spent at not responding in this thread maybe?

And ditto. See how this gets us nowhere?

amat victoria quram

[chronique]

*curam

[Sargsyan]

ironic

[Sargsyan]

sorry

[Cometk]

My time is not better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve if my time is able to be said to be spent better at all.

logic doesn't follow

your time could still be better spent doing this task among any other task that you might consider a better way to spend it

And if your time is able to be said to be spent better at all perhaps your time is better spent looking at his build and telling him how to improve than making obvious unhelpful dunks.

don't have the time personally, and apparently being a bit more respectful to newer players is not obvious, nor would i deem it unhelpful to remind regular users to be a bit kinder to newer ones

[Superfly47]

I have tried it with dutch once reaching imperial (3v3, ffa, etc) to try to squeeze a bit more eco out of those 50 vills since livestock is about twice as fast gathering as mills but with the input cost and extra apm its... difficult to justify. Brits have the cards for it but the number of cards required is impossible to justify, when hunts take 0 cards and by all means, shipping advanced mills and 1000 wood will get you further anyways (not that that is what you should do but its 2 cards that can give more longterm eco). The team card is probably worth sending if you have a japan teammate or fulling mills on a like 3v3 mongolia where teammates all send you their water buffalo... other than that the livestock cards generally remain locked into treaty games

I always go for herdable economy as Iroquois on 3v3 games at some point. Iroquois can less than 10 villagers on food throughout late game with herdable economy, allowing them to have 25 villagers on firepit and still have comparable economy to Euros. Without herdables, Iroquois economy is so awful late game. China and Brits economy are strong without herdables so they don't need to do it.

For maps like Deccan that have lots of herdables, get selective breading tech when you can, send fulling mills when cows fatten. Then put 5 vil on harvesting them, and take rest off food, either onto gold for aging or wood and firepit to boom out tomahawks. Send ranching as next card and create 10 cows. When you run out of food, harvest some of the cows, even if not fully fattened. Get 2nd farm up soon to have 20 cows fattening.

[Goodspeed]

There are many reasons a water boom is better than a livestock boom, but I have 2 main objections to the OP:

1. You seem to be ignoring the fact that you need 2 cards for a livestock boom to become at all worth it, when you only need 1 (actually none in the newer EP versions) for a water boom to pay off. This is an especially big deal considering the following.

2. You seem to think the 60 vs 120 seconds ROI argument means cows > fishing boats, but a cow is gone after you eat it, while a fishing boat keeps gathering. Assuming your math is correct you can get your 80 food back 60 seconds after you train the cow. However, you gained nothing. A fishing boat on the other hand pays for itself after 120 seconds and after that it actually starts gaining you stuff, and doesn't stop. To gain anything from a cow you have to wait longer than the 60 seconds, and there's still the fact that it disappears after you eat it.

Which comes back to the main concept we need to understand to realize why a fish boom is superior. With fishing boats you are actually building a long-term economy, while a livestock build (wrongly, though understandably considering its treaty origins, called a "boom") is more like a permanent boost to your economy, much like a villager shipment. It's not a boom because it doesn't enable you to keep growing your economy. Considering you have to send 2 shipments for it, in the early game simply sending villager shipments instead is better in almost all cases, especially considering the cards aren't the only investment you need to make.

@Artyfeusz

[Superfly47]

@Goodspeed Herdable economy as I call it, would be done on maps with good amount of livestock already. You send fulling mills when initial herdables are about to fatten, then put 5 vils on those and take rest off food. You get immediate benefit of tons of food. Send ranching next, you will have tons of food so you can spend 800f on 10 cows and still have tons.

Doing this on map with no herdables would be far harder since you need to send ranching card and 800f for benefit you won't get till later on. Better to avoid this and just for map with livestock. I did calculation before, with 10 cows, sending fulling mills saves 400 food that would otherwise decay and about 240 villager seconds. You also get long-term benefit of card.

Herdable economy does not give cows, it provides slots to build cows with ranching and to harvest them super fast with fulling mills.

You don't need to wall or turtle since with livestock on the map, you don't require much initial investment. No investment with China since you already have village, using travois to build farm as Iroqouis and I guess a pig pen as British if you wanted to try that, never have with British yet. Fish boom requires a lot of initial investment, just like manor boom, so its not a fair comparison to going herdables on map with livestock since it does not take much initial investment.

[Artyfeusz]

I always go for herdable economy as Iroquois on 3v3 games at some point. Iroquois can less than 10 villagers on food throughout late game with herdable economy, allowing them to have 25 villagers on firepit and still have comparable economy to Euros. Without herdables, Iroquois economy is so awful late game. China and Brits economy are strong without herdables so they don't need to do it.

For maps like Deccan that have lots of herdables, get selective breading tech when you can, send fulling mills when cows fatten. Then put 5 vil on harvesting them, and take rest off food, either onto gold for aging or wood and firepit to boom out tomahawks. Send ranching as next card and create 10 cows. When you run out of food, harvest some of the cows, even if not fully fattened. Get 2nd farm up soon to have 20 cows fattening.

Unfortunetly it doesn't Iro don't have both: factories and cards from HC to boost plantation / farm gathering, and also weaker upgrades (as for natives) in plantation / farms.
So late game Iro deck won't have comparable eco to any euro civ (excluding dutch, thats obviously worst eco in game, maybe as bad as Sioux without huntable animals around).

But cow "boost" as somebody called it, can really give you upper hand in mid game. Additional ~2-4 k net profit in food at 13-14 minute might be huge thing.

There are many reasons a water boom is better than a livestock boom, but I have 2 main objections to the OP:

1. You seem to be ignoring the fact that you need 2 cards for a livestock boom to become at all worth it, when you only need 1 (actually none in the newer EP versions) for a water boom to pay off. This is an especially big deal considering the following.

Take into account that 120 seconds ROI for boat is when you have card that lowers its price 60%. If you pay 100 wood for boat ROI goes up to ~275 seconds (4 minutes 35 seconds!!).

2. You seem to think the 60 vs 120 seconds ROI argument means cows > fishing boats, but a cow is gone after you eat it, while a fishing boat keeps gathering. Assuming your math is correct you can get your 80 food back 60 seconds after you train the cow. However, you gained nothing. A fishing boat on the other hand pays for itself after 120 seconds and after that it actually starts gaining you stuff, and doesn't stop. To gain anything from a cow you have to wait longer than the 60 seconds, and there's still the fact that it disappears after you eat it.

Ye I said it later, that if you wanna keep producing cows, then obviously "first generation" of cows needs to pay for itself + "next generation" and every "future generation" of cows needs to pay for future generation only, so to treat it as long team investment, 1st generation need to give you 160*cows produced of "profit" (this happens when they have around 200 meat on themselve), and then each next generation needs to pay for future generation (so around 106 meat and everything above is actual profit).

Which comes back to the main concept we need to understand to realize why a fish boom is superior. With fishing boats you are actually building a long-term economy, while a livestock build (wrongly, though understandably considering its treaty origins, called a "boom") is more like a permanent boost to your economy, much like a villager shipment. It's not a boom because it doesn't enable you to keep growing your economy. Considering you have to send 2 shipments for it, in the early game simply sending villager shipments instead is better in almost all cases, especially considering the cards aren't the only investment you need to make.

It only depends how much you invest in cows, if you send 2 cards for 1 cow, then obviously, with 10-15-20 cows, its different story. If you consider that you can survive till cows get 500 meat, and you kill them only then, it means cow gives you around 350 food pure profit after 6 minutes, which is 58 food / minute, villager gives you 50 food of pure profit per minute, in that 6 minute period.
So sending 2 cards for cows AND building 8 of them is better than getting 9 villagers with 2 cards from HC.
At least in terms of pure stats of gathered resources, obviously, you don't have enough raxes / stables, to instantly pop out all army from that "boost", and obviously you can't die before it etc.

But we consider defensive playstyle in both cases livestock / water, since in both cases you bet that you survive long enough for it to pay off, same for villagers shipment, you need around 4 minutes 30 seconds for 5 villagers to gather 660 wood.