Architects and Lombards

[andrewgs]

Architects

Architects are worth like 2.5v when building for free:

They take 40s to train, compared to 25s for a villager, so it's worth making a second one. They don't have diminishing returns, unlike villagers on buildings, so having two halves the time it takes to build a building.

The basilica reduces build times by 33% for paid buildings, and 10% for free buildings built by architects, within a radius 6 barracks widths wide inclusive. It doesn't affect fort or tc wagons. The effect of multiple basilica don't stack.

Lombards

Lombards take 150s to convert a 300 resource into other resouces. The first table in the lombard tab in the spreadsheet shows the resouces they'll be converted to. A second lombard reduces the time to 75s, third to 50s etc.

The second table shows the villager seconds gained by converting resources with different market upgrades, and later switching to a mill for food. The villager seconds gained are then divided by 150s to get to a villager equivilant for a lombard.

Early age 2 you can squeze a bit of extra eco from investing food, but it's not much and will leave you a batch of units behind. Late game it can prevent an estate switch or delay a mill switch.

Like market trading, resources from lombards don't show in the post game graphs.

[ShinkuroYukinari]

Very interesting, and would prove useful for determining usefulness of either unit. Granted, I have a few remarks about your methodology.

You add the resource cost of each building into the total time needed to construct a building. While I understand that you want to account for the fact that the building is free, this isnt the way to add it up. Instead, consider opting for villager seconds, that is the amount of time needed for a vil to collect the resource. You can cover both base and with the first market upgrade, since it's 100 food and an easy pickup for Italy and an extra vil.

As well, you need to account for the caveat of that building still being built extremely slowly for most cases(architect building tp looks extremely tempting ngl)

Are you sure about the Lombard calculations? The trickle should be 1.5 food/1 wood/1 gold per second depending on which resource is invested, totalling to 225 food/150 wood/150 coin after 150 seconds.

Also, try to elaborate on the comparison between Lombards and Vils, it's hard to follow your comparisons there.

[Thrar]

Very interesting analysis, thank you.

Additional architects being worth it depend on whether there are enough things to build that are not time-sensitive. A barracks or stable is often something you need right now, not in 2 minutes. One architect on house duty is probably good to have, but if you're trading units two of them might already build up more pop space than you actually need.
TPs on the trade route are probably something that are always useful and not in a hurry, but there are only so many of them you can build and it might not be safe for the architect to be out there either.

For the lombards, it's interesting that with T2 upgrades (i.e. all things equal) spending wood isn't worth it as long as you're on hunts. Interestingly, since with Italy you're likely to get at least tier 1 upgrades on everything early, I'm getting the impression that focusing exclusively on food probably isn't worth the faster hunt depletion for the extra 2-3 vils you're getting out of it.
Maybe best would be to skip log flume (T2 wood) until later, focus vils on hunts and coin with steel traps and amalgamation, and mainly get wood from the lombards and the occasional market trade.


@ShinkuroYukinari I don't see anything wrong with the architect analysis. He calculates the number of VS for e.g. a house at 200 plus the build time for a total of 210 VS, then divides by the architect build time (80s) to get the result of 2.6. That is to say you would need 2.6 vils to gather the wood and build the house (slightly more since 2.6 vils don't build exactly 2.6x as fast) in the same time the architect builds it.
I do agree that these numbers would be more meaningful with gang saw included, although it's a pretty small difference (multiply resource VS cost by 10/11 before adding build time).

[ShinkuroYukinari]

@ShinkuroYukinari I don't see anything wrong with the architect analysis. He calculates the number of VS for e.g. a house at 200 plus the build time for a total of 210 VS, then divides by the architect build time (80s) to get the result of 2.6. That is to say you would need 2.6 vils to gather the wood and build the house (slightly more since 2.6 vils don't build exactly 2.6x as fast) in the same time the architect builds it.

Ah, I see now, thank you

[andrewgs]

Very interesting analysis, thank you.
For the lombards, it's interesting that with T2 upgrades (i.e. all things equal) spending wood isn't worth it as long as you're on hunts. Interestingly, since with Italy you're likely to get at least tier 1 upgrades on everything early, I'm getting the impression that focusing exclusively on food probably isn't worth the faster hunt depletion for the extra 2-3 vils you're getting out of it.
Maybe best would be to skip log flume (T2 wood) until later, focus vils on hunts and coin with steel traps and amalgamation, and mainly get wood from the lombards and the occasional market trade.

I think it's viable with spice trade (which will give you back those 2-3vils of hunt depletion), probably needs a native like cree or berbers to be good as there's no 5v card. Minimoult did this https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1482230935 at 18min, I was trying it but didn't get close to his res without berbers.

[andrewgs]

Are you sure about the Lombard calculations? The trickle should be 1.5 food/1 wood/1 gold per second depending on which resource is invested, totalling to 225 food/150 wood/150 coin after 150 seconds.

Also, try to elaborate on the comparison between Lombards and Vils, it's hard to follow your comparisons there.

I deposited 1500f, noted the starting / end res and divided by 5. same for w and c.

Taking the t1 + steel traps, depositing 300f example. This gives you +223vs (compared to gathering the w or c instead) and takes 150s. 223vs/150s = 1.5v

[Narida]

So basically lombards aren't very good are they? 200w for 1.5v and it takes time to pay off the 200w plus 300res you invested. I guess the thing is that you get them for free usually from age ups cards and architects.

[helln00]

huh the lombards are worse then I thought, orgininally i thought it was a profitable conversion with you inputing 300 and getting 600 back

[Challenger_Marco]

Lombards rather than being a profitable building it helps a lot for macro you can just have wood without having any vills rather than selling at market and getting wood if you have any res excess just invest in lombard so it's actually more worth as chopping wood is costly

[ShinkuroYukinari]

Lombards rather than being a profitable building it helps a lot for macro you can just have wood without having any vills rather than selling at market and getting wood if you have any res excess just invest in lombard so it's actually more worth as chopping wood is costly

Indeed. I would consider Lombard builds to be amazing on maps with tons of hunts and/or livestock to collect. Having Marco Polo to scout them out is really beneficial, plus late game, once you get the age 4 card(that improves yield rate and benefit from investment), they become rather profitable, especially if you combine them with the other 2 cards that improve Lombards(100% workrate and trickle xp). You can consider it an eco bonus on top of all the others, albeit one that you have to mother constantly, given how it takes like 60-70 seconds for 5 Lombards to consume 1500 of either resource when fully maxed out.

For practical circumstances, food boom builds seem to be the best choice to use Lombards in, albeit one that can get caught by very early aggression.

[andrewgs]

So basically lombards aren't very good are they? 200w for 1.5v and it takes time to pay off the 200w plus 300res you invested. I guess the thing is that you get them for free usually from age ups cards and architects.

They're not free if you're using an architect, you could build 1.5 houses or a tp instead.

100w 100c 300f seems terrible for 1.5v, but 200w 200c 300f for 3v isnt as bad

The lombard cards are more difficult. 700c deposited in a lombard is like 3.5v (1.5f+1w/s). So you need to build another lombard, but this makes it more like 500c since you've spent 200res on the extra lombard. So it's not great on its own, you need to be depositing food / intending to send the 1500 shipment later.

[Thrar]

The 700c comes with a lombard, so by itself it's kind of like a weird crate shipment of 525f 350w that gathers itself, but much slower than normal crates. If you already have a lombard or two for food conversion purposes it becomes better though; it makes your food conversion more efficient and the auto-gathering for the pseudo-crates is faster too.

Let's say you invested res or architect time into building 2 lombards by the time your 700c lombard comes in. You now have 3 lombards equivalent to 4.5 vils converting food and a bit of building XP, plus 525f 350w in virtual crates gathered at roughly the speed of a single vil on crates. You spent a total of 200w 200c (lombards), 300f (upfront food cost), and an age 2 card. To me that sounds acceptable but not strong enough to build a strategy around it.
Every additional lombard is 1.5 vils for 100w 100c which again is passable but not amazing.

Considering the basilica card, I would think of it as 400 res for the free basilica, plus a free TP for every 2.5 lombards you have using food only. If you don't already have a basilica I'd say it's worth it at 3 lombards (I wouldn't value a second basilica at 200w 200c since it only gives you an extra TP worth of trickle). If you send that before the 700c lombard card, that card also gives an extra 140 XP spread over its entire gather time. Clearly the synergies are starting to add up, but still not to the point of something incredible in my opinion.

[fei123456]

It's awkward that lombard, though not cost-effective at all, is the only way to "boom" as Italy. Without that you even struggle hard to gather the exact resource for mercenaries.

[andrewgs]

They don't have diminishing returns, unlike villagers on buildings, so having two halves the time it takes to build a building.

The basilica reduces build times by 33% for paid buildings, and 10% for free buildings built by architects, within a radius 6 barracks widths wide inclusive. It doesn't affect fort or tc wagons. The effect of multiple basilica don't stack.

Fixed that first sentence. I didn't realise the basilica affected building speeds so added a note on that.