Most cards in the game sorted by their total value based on gather-rates

Korea South GideonAI
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Joined: Jun 30, 2022

Most cards in the game sorted by their total value based on gather-rates

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Post by GideonAI »



I also made a video to introduce the list:

Here's the transcript for the video if you'd like a bit of background:

So! I made a list showing the values of almost all the cards in the game of Age of Empires 3. I used a combined "villager-seconds" formula to determine the value of these cards. Villager-seconds (or "VS" for short) is the lifeblood of AoE. It's used to build buildings, shoot while garrisoned, tank damage and fight, dance at the community plaza, pick up crates, or (most often) gather resources. Your resources can then be spent to harm enemies, protect yourself and allies, or gather even more resources. At a base level, 1 villager gathers food fastest, coin second, and wood third, but even though resources can be scarce and vills move more when gathering different resources I decided not to factor that in to the values (nor the value of yield buffs or infinite resources such as food from Farms).

This version of the list is not a finished version and will receive updates in the future (especially depending on feedback from people such as yourself!)

As for why I made it, anytime I started playing a civ I always wondered what their "best cards" were. Eventually I made a list for my mains, then the civs I was interested in playing on the side, then the civs that had cool synergies with certain outlaws or natives, then I had almost all of them so I just finished it all up. I like to think this resource will help anyone who wants to play the game more competitively. Already it shows us why cards that are seen as efficient are used commonly (such as 700w or 2 falconets both being near the top of their respective ages), but it can also reveal to us new possibilities and potential strategies. Especially the extremely-high-value "build-around" cards like Tupac Rebellion, it's just very cool to me to know that there's a massive payoff for playing into a certain weird strategy and I may make videos dedicated to some of those in the future. And even besides the big flashy cards, who knew that infinite 9 state militia was higher value than 7 sharpshooters?

Keep in mind when using this list where the value is going, however. Advanced Frontier Defenses is absurdly strong but mostly just defensive value and doesn't often generate value against an enemy boom or turtle, while upgrade cards such as Seven Council Fires or the Russian church card look extremely powerful but aren't actually that impressive unless you're using those units that they upgrade.

Also, just because it's high value technically speaking doesn't mean you have to send it. Keep in mind that the most value you can generate on the battlefield is going to come from micromanaging your units to attack the enemies that they counter. So even though you could ship culvs for high value, if your enemy is stuck in age 2 it would be better to ship the unit that counters what you know they have (and information is also valuable). Making this list also made me realize it was useful to know what you can make with what resources, where before I would only focus on 1 or 2 resources for easy economy now I have my backup plan in case I'm cut off of a natural resource that I wanted to use.

Lastly, don't use this list to bash on people for using certain cards because they're quote-unquote "low value". If you want to make helpful recommendations to your pals feel free, but I don't want people stifling creativity or anything.

That's it for the video, let me know here on esoc or over on youtube if you have any questions or comments!

Also, I'm considering switching the value sections for Dutch/Ethiopia so that the COST of the shipments are just using the discount gather-rate boosted versions while the NET value is done using the base rate that other civs have to pay to indicate just how strong those shipments are. Currently it's done with 2 values, 1 being the "base rate cost - base rate profit" as well as "boosted rate cost - boosted rate profit" which I don't think properly ranks the value and makes it harder to read.
United States of America GKShaman
ESOC Media Team
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Re: Most cards in the game sorted by their total value based on gather-rates

Post by GKShaman »

This is amazing!!! @GideonAI Thanks for putting this together!
No Flag purplesquid
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Re: Most cards in the game sorted by their total value based on gather-rates

Post by purplesquid »

Very useful. Thank you for taking the time to put this all together

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