Comments

It's good to see the exact formula for caravan trading. I hadn't known about the map size itself affecting trade value.

With a unit's speed, that's the number of tiles traveled per second, yes?

And is +trade bonus from gear/tech/advisors treated as a seperate multiplier to the end result? It doesn't seem to be covered in the formula.

 

I had noticed that there was variation in gold per seconds in different maps. That MAX_MAP_LEN explains it! I was very close to the formula otherwise.

It's mentioned in work rate. I guess it just multiplies it.

 

finally some nice formula clearly showing how the trade is calculated, I love to see it.
Distance was obviously the most important factor, I think it was obvious that it could not be linear
work rate is pretty much trade stat, it is interesting to see its actual value
map size was quite noticable especially if you compare maps like Fright Club (small map) vs Mad Medians (big map)
bonus is a known thing
TC factor is something new and it seems something interesting could be done with it. Just a thought but could it be that this value was supposed to get affected by the priestess of ra blessing so their caravans get compensated for having 10% weaker work rate?

Anyway, great blog, I think it is now clear how the calculation works.

 

Nice post.. interesting read...learnt a few things along the way!

 

Very cool and appreciate the explanation. All under the hood.

 

Allright people, I have done MATHS, and bring to you my findings!

First finding - The absolute BEST Merchant Gear for trading, for both Caravans and Merchant Transport, is the Merchant Log of the Nile! A very, VERY close second is the craftable Titan-Bound Gaff Stick!
The previous favorite, the Light Camel Barding, is significantly weaker in terms of overall gold/second provided - At max favorable distance, the difference between Light Camel Barding and Merchant Log of the Nile is greater then 10% in terms of gold output, and that difference only increases as the distance becomes shorter (because of having to make safer caravan routes, because the area doesn't allow for longer caravan routes, ect). On the other hand, the difference between Titan-Bound Gaff Stick and Merchant Log of the Nile is roughly 1%

Second Finding - In terms of using Merchant Transports vs Caravans when you can have both (Think Kourion, in which you have a small body of water the exact distance as a safe caravan route), it's better to use a Caravan line in terms of gold per second per population cost, unless, of course, the merchant transport ships can carry more gold then the Caravan (In which case it's normally a sea map).


Third finding, more of a confirmation - Gold Generation via Caravans is, indeed, much higher then Villagers, outside of extremely short trips. In general, if you can get more then 56 gold on a trip, the caravan will produce more gold/second then villager. In co-op, this difference is even more noticable.

Caravans are also especially powerful in PvP even without gear and with nerfed upgrades, due to the much smaller size of the PvP maps compared to most PvE maps.

Edit: With Egypt caravans being normalized, removed refs to Egypt caravans

 

Kevsoft, making sure - Docks also have a town center factor of 1, yes? It seems that Merchant Transports have a naturally higher work rate, being at 1.5

 

I've noticed many (even really good players otherwise) use caravans in a far from optimal way, and few ever use the "Display Trade Preview" which I think is unwise. Many just put the markets up at furthest possible distance in safe area, and then get 150g far from the end of the route - hence they walk ALOT where it's just waste of time with no gain.

This is how I do it. First off I've set my "build market" to "J" as well as my "Display Trade Preview" is set to "J", so if I spam it when building the first push "J" is "build market", and the next "J" automatically is the preview (as well as each "J" after that). So it's here I move the mouse to see where the numbers is right for my civ. With my gears I've noticed that a number of 116g ends up with me getting about 130g (due to gear) for the early rounds, which will be 149-150g with the Age 4 upgrade.

I think that's the most optimal way to do it, otherwise one could always argue to skip the Age 4 upgrade and find the number for insta 149-150g. I'd say to get 149g when you're done is "best" in a way since then you know you're as close to perfect as can be. Even if 150 is optimal it's very much worse with alot of useless travel-distance/time (and you cannot see if or how much that is when you see 150g).

 

Yea, fortunately we will be able to see the "exact" number once the new preview changes is up, which I like.

Now for Dock preview numbers next

 

Abit late, but very interesting blog, makes more sense now to see everything on deeper mechanical level, I personally would love to see more as I'm not too good withe pure deep mechanical stuff, leave that to froggy XD, But yes really interesting to see! Thanks Kevsoft!^^

I actually use merchant log of nile on all civs, just seems to be best option, glad i was right

Merchant ship trading on egypt is very interesting, perhaps poor perikles will be used more.

Keep it up frog!

 

I might recommend if you want to play with the TC_factor for other civs then maybe we could have the huns having a better TC factor because they helped joined Europe and Asia and were well known for their trading.

 

Was playing around today testing advisors and put together some interesting numbers (to me at least) for caravans comparing them to Miner Kleon. So testing was on Village of Sais (lots of resources to start, left alone for ages and lots of space, so makes a good testing ground), not sure of the map size of that, so would need to test on some other map sizes too. So this information is just a piece of a larger picture, but thought i'd share it.

Miner Kleon
-Gets up to 1.42g/sec immediately, 1.59g/sec in age 2 tech, 1.78g/s in age 3 tech, and also has nice x1.89 conservation as Romans with SPQR

Caravans
(no advisors but near optimal gear)
-Age2_125range prediction, 127g/84sec => 1.5g/sec
-Age3_20%speed for 300w,300g -> 127g/74sec => 1.72g/sec
-Age4_20%trade for 500f,500w -> 150g/74sec => 2.03g/sec
Short ranges
-Age2_50range, 50g/51sec => 1.0g/sec
-Age3_20%speed -> 50g/43sec => 1.16g/sec
-Age2_100range, 100g/73sec => 1.37g/sec
-Age3_100range, 100g/60sec => 1.66g/sec

(zeno)
-Age2_125range, 125g/72sec => 1.73g/sec
-Age2_50range, 52g/43sec => 1.2g/sec

(Dumnorix - estimated) = 8% more gold/sec
(Servilla - estimated) = 15% more gold/sec (prefer dumnorix for getting more caravans out earlier due to cost saving and so greater value in age 2/3)

So I'm thinking that for maps where you play solo and can't do full caravan route or where you start with limited resources then Miner Kleon might be pretty solid option and then just transition to caravans later. Of course caravans have advantage of essentially giving you more eco production locations, but again this is just thinking of the case where you've limited starting resources or short caravan paths available.

 

New Caravan stats sheet added to guide, I know other players have done this before but wanted to present info in a gold per second format, and will be using the info for guides for Legendary quest maps in future. Hope its helpful to people. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...o61pzQyDTPILsaH6f_XTx-fXo/edit#gid=1072424742

Part of looking at this was wanted to see how good Miner Kleon is, and answer is pretty good in some scenarios, such as when quest forces a shorter market line or when you start with low resources and need to defend early and market would be a bit slow to repay itself.
Also going full 150 gold market route in Age 2 is very effective (a 10% gold/sec gain over setting up a 125 gold route), and then just ignore the age 4 upgrade, for quests where you need to spend time and defend in age 2,3.

 

Excellent spreadsheet Aryzel!

With the A2/A4 portion, you can also just set up a closer market once you get the A4 tech and then delete the older market. At least half your caravan line will simply swap to using the new market with the more efficient trade line. The other half will generally go AFK to the selected TC.

I wonder exactly how many 600x600 maps there are? I feel that Turanian Trouble is roughly 400x400 or so, whereas VoK seems even larger then 600x600 - Did you use the scout to estimate the map size, or were you able to find the map files and datamine it directly?

At the same time, I don't think there are any 100x100 maps outside of Lots of Rogues and similar small maps. I think EMIC was roughly 250x250, and it's one of the smaller high star PvE maps there are.

 

Thanks frogs.poison!

Quests sheet updated, now shows for Legendary quests, Start Age, Starting Resources , Map Size and typical Caravan gold/sec for the map based on a age 2 150g route https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...o61pzQyDTPILsaH6f_XTx-fXo/edit#gid=1065947759

Rhakotis has 5x600size maps and 2x500size maps, all other Legendary quests are in the 150-400 range, with majority in the 200-300 range. To measure sizes I use watch posts with 126-158 LOS mostly, took screenshot, then blew up in paint to have larger distances to measure. Sizes should be accurate to +-5 I think.

 

Damn, Rhakotis maps are huge, and pretty much all other maps are a lot smaller then I thought they would be.

No offense, but when using Watch Posts, did you measure by diameter or radius? Pretty sure the LoS stat is the radius and not diameter - I don't remember Turanian Trouble being able to be revealed by just 2 130 LoS watch post.

Additionally, keep in mind that for maps that aren't a perfect square - Kandy Kane Kourion being an excellent example - The map lein is the longest side, not the shortest side. I know that a 160 LoS watch post reveals almost the entirety of the short side, but you need a bit over 2 to reveal the rest of the map.

 

Yes LOS is radius, wait shit, i might have forgotten to double it on todays numbers. Ok, map sizes updated and gold/sec numbers deleted until I get 10min, probably monday.

Alot more big maps now. Thanks for questioning it frogs.posion, good catch!