First off I strongly advise everybody, no matter how good you may be, to play a training game. Honestly.

Right. Down to brass tacks. Right now, the Market can do one thing, which is sell Tribute, your score, for Gold.

Right now, I believe a gempond generates 20 tribute/turn, mines 12 tribute/turn, quarries 10 tribute/turn, and woodmills 8 tribute/turn.

With that in mind, a metal pile gives approximately 20-25 tribute, with the other resources seemingly equal?

With that said, goldmines generate +500 gold/turn and gold stacks, when hit, will give somewhere between 1k-1.2k to the hitter. So the balance seems to be that a stack gives you slightly more in the case of resource than two turns of generation.

For comparitive purposes, killing an barbarian stack gives 12 tribute, which is approximately equal to one turn of resource generation by a non-goldmine building.

I would say that an average duelist would have a steady income of 120~ish tribute with a variable on top of that depending on what's happening, ie. if he smashes some piles or has a large battle.

Where I'm going with this. Well.

A market exchanges tribute for gold, at a rate of (Efficiency x Quantity x 20) - Trade Fee. Efficiency originally begins at 0.4 and can be upgraded to 0.6, 0.8 and 1. Quantity increases at a rate of 100 x the number of markets you have in play. Having more markets allows more Tribute to be sold at once thus downplaying the trade fee. The trade fee begins at 400 and decreases to 200 and 0 with two more techs.

The more astute of you will already know that it takes about five turns for a gempond to make 100 tribute, eight turns for a mine to make 100 tribute, a quarry ten turns, and a woodmill twelve turns. When this 100 tribute is sold with no tech, it's worth 400 gold.

Therefore, 8 turns of mine = 400 gold = 4/5 of a goldmine turn. So, therefore, a goldmine is worth about ten times a ore mine.

The key factor there is no upgrades. With 100% efficiency and no fee, those 8 turns generate 2000 gold, which is 250 gold per turn. That puts the rate of the goldmine only two times better. And that's one mine. You usually have two. And a pond. And two quarries. And two woodmills.

By paying only 15k in techs and buildings (which is subsidised along the way BY the techs you're buying, I might add) you get 1600 gold a turn in exchange for your score (which can be increased to 1800/turn with another 1k tech). I mean, Empire costs 5k for 800/turn, this is just a much bigger, more dangerous, and much more profitable investment.

My other point is: is there really a need to hit piles anymore? Would it be better for a duelist to take his buildings, kill the barbarians, and capture the buildings the barbarians guard? Should you really go out of your way for resource piles anymore?

Last Edited : Wednesday, 22 October 2008 - 03:15

No i think that if you can get a pile on your way out great but going out of your for anything other than gold is worthless to me.

I find the only use for a market is to get the 2 upper gold techs.

Also other than maybe a gem mine(if you want tribute)

gold mines are now the most valuable. As one gold mine is 1/10th of a fully upgraded tech and castle of gold.

There comes a time when all the buildings are taken
and only combat will increase them
When war comes you will find few extra forces to get those piles
so you might as well get them while the gettins good

"For comparitive purposes, killing an barbarian stack gives 12 tribute..."

what size of Barbarian stack are we calculating by here?

Im assuming 10 stack

Dg,

One correction to your calculation - atm you cannot get rid of the 200 fee per trade even with Expert Techs (unless that particular bug has been fixed).

seems the max income in duels for tribute is 200 is thata bug or something?

correct me if I'm wrong... but since Tribute doesn't add up, but instead just counts for that turn... a pile you smash on turn 1 only counts for turn 1's score, right? it's not going to help you at all for your end-game scoring...

at least, that's what it looks like for me (I kinda need confirmation, because I've never seen the Tribute system before)

Me too. I'm a little lost here, and from browsing the forums, it seems as though the tribute mod has changed somewhat from the original. I can't really tell if tribute persists, or is exchangeable for gold anymore, which along with "points" is evidently the only thing needed to get troops.

Tribute mechanics were changed again in January from what DG was describing.

Tribute no longer accumulates and therefore cannot be sold in the Market. In fact Market Place does not come up as an option on the Control Panel anymore as there is nothing to sell.

The only reason to buy the Market Tech & build a Market Place these days is to get the two extra gold techs Government and Empire which are now pretty much vital in duels & camps.

Resource piles (other than gold) do not actually yeild additional tribute anymore ~ despite what the pop-up says ~ but you do get a (v small) amount of gold for their destruction.

Your tribute score, and therefore your rank, is wholly dependent on the resource buildings that you owned in the previous turn (I've noticed a one turn delay in score accumulation in my current camps). So, the more buildings you own the better your tribute/ score and therefore your rank.

The "points" in barracks that you mention Floyd accumulate at a rate of 50 per turn for a 100% healthy barracks with no techs. Barracks that are not 100% accumulate at the proportional rate and you can increase the rate by buying techs (add 5 points per turn).

So a full strength, un-tech'd barracks can produce a low level stack every turn.

I'm not sure where things were at the last time you played, but there is now no limit to the number of active barracks you can have. Also, comms can build multiple structures on the same turn and also move after building.

In addition, troop stregths were reshuffled last year so the humble scout is no longer the world-beater it used to be and will be creamed by a similarly tech'd spear stack.

Wow. That is EXACTLY what I needed to know. *bows* Thank you sir.

You are most welcome!