Cost efficiency in units

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        Out of an interesting mix of curiousity and boredom, I decided to compare the costs of some Dwarf units to their attack or defense values, depending on the purpose. I found that Tier one units tend to be more cost efficient than the corresponding tier two unit. For example, 
        
         
          Dwarven Axmen have a base cost 269 total resources, and an attack of 27: 9.96 resource cost per attack point. 
          Dwarven Stalwarts have a total cost of 446 resources, and an attack of 42: 10.6 c/a.
         
         
          The values for the bowmen class are hairier, because I averaged the defense scores. however, 
         
         
          
           Slingers have a resource cost per average defense ratio of 9.05; crossbowmen have 12.04. 
          
          The trend continues for 
          Spears
           
          and Cavalry.
         
         
          
            14.76 cost per defense for yeomen, 21.63 for halberdiers
           11.06 packsmen compared to 15.12 runeriders
          
          Therefore, I ask the Gentle Reader to poke holes in my math, illustrate the pointlessness of the entire endeavor do to external considerations, refer me to previous incarnations of this thread, and otherwise tell me I'm wrong; or if it so happens, if im right. 
         
        
        
         

        
        
         Note: All values come from the Arcanum. As neither upkeep nor scaled build times are included therein, they dont factor. This leads to the probable conclusion that when time is more valued than resources, Tier 2 units move back to the fore.

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axer Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List New Poster Joined: 12 Jul 2012 Status: Offline Points: 6	Topic: Cost efficiency in units Posted: 12 Jul 2012 at 01:46
	Out of an interesting mix of curiousity and boredom, I decided to compare the costs of some Dwarf units to their attack or defense values, depending on the purpose. I found that Tier one units tend to be more cost efficient than the corresponding tier two unit. For example, Dwarven Axmen have a base cost 269 total resources, and an attack of 27: 9.96 resource cost per attack point. Dwarven Stalwarts have a total cost of 446 resources, and an attack of 42: 10.6 c/a. The values for the bowmen class are hairier, because I averaged the defense scores. however, Slingers have a resource cost per average defense ratio of 9.05; crossbowmen have 12.04. The trend continues for Spears and Cavalry. 14.76 cost per defense for yeomen, 21.63 for halberdiers 11.06 packsmen compared to 15.12 runeriders Therefore, I ask the Gentle Reader to poke holes in my math, illustrate the pointlessness of the entire endeavor do to external considerations, refer me to previous incarnations of this thread, and otherwise tell me I'm wrong; or if it so happens, if im right. Note: All values come from the Arcanum. As neither upkeep nor scaled build times are included therein, they dont factor. This leads to the probable conclusion that when time is more valued than resources, Tier 2 units move back to the fore.

Anjire Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Postmaster Joined: 18 Sep 2010 Status: Offline Points: 688	Posted: 12 Jul 2012 at 01:51
	Recruit time....


Hadus Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Postmaster Joined: 28 Jun 2012 Status: Offline Points: 545	Posted: 12 Jul 2012 at 03:01
	As a general rule, T1 military and diplomatic units provide more defense per g/h tha their T2 counterparts, but the T2 units offer more Attack bang for the buck. This isn't always the case though. Also, you refer to "cost per defense." Are you sure you don't mean defense per cost? Measuring the amount of attack/defense a unit provides, divided by their upkeep cost in gold, is a more effective way to look at efficiency. Looking at Human spear units, a Militiaman(T1) has 7/11/4/11/13 with a 1 g/h upkeep. A Pikeman(T2) has 16/17/11/17/29 and a 2g/h upkeep (The stats go ATK/Spear DEF/Bow DEF/Sword DEF/Cavalry DEF). Now we look at the upkeep costs. It costs the same g/h to have 2 Militiamen as it does to own 1 Pikeman. So, if we compare 2 Militiamen to 2 Pikemen, we get: Militiaman: 14 / 22 / 8 / 22 / 26 Pikeman: 16 / 17 / 11 / 17 / 29 Note this shows the value of 2 g/h worth of units. To get the actual stats per unit of upkeep cost, divide all stats by 2. Probably obvious but worth clarifying. Thus, based on cost efficiency, you will gain more Spear and Sword defense by training Militiamen, but more Attack, Bow and Cavalry Defense by training Pikemen. This is not groudbreaking by any means, there's probably a tutorial somewhere that shows this. Hope it helps you out though. EDIT: Oh, I see you are referring to the initial resource production cost, not upkeep cost. My bad. Edited by Hadus - 12 Jul 2012 at 03:16


Rill Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Postmaster General Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903	Posted: 12 Jul 2012 at 03:36
	your assessment is correct. Tier 1 units in general are more cost effective in terms of resource cost to produce vs attack and/or defense value than are tier 2 units. Tier 2 units are more effective in terms of attack/production time. At least this is also true for human cavalry units. As a human, I tend to produce t1 cav during peace and t2 cav during war/tournaments for this reason.

dunnoob Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Postmaster Joined: 10 Dec 2011 Location: Elijal Status: Offline Points: 800	Posted: 12 Jul 2012 at 04:58
	Comparisons based on gold p/h strike me as slightly odd, the upkeep is only one factor. The initial costs (weapons+beer) and the training time, ignoring potential sov benefits, are also very important. Some troops are not supposed to live long for small players below 200K pop; they die killing the rats required for the graduation (level 74+) of their commanders. For dwarves a very interesting unit is the halbardier (T2 spear): Its attack is only 16, but its defense vs. cav is 29. In theory that's a 14.5 cav defense per hourly gold upkeep. They are fast to train (600sec), only yeomen (T1 spears, 500sec) are faster. But not cheap, 3 gold + 2 swords + 1 chain mail + 1 plate. An overall mean time before death caused by killing rats would be wrong, I use other units to fight NPCs.

Sloter Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Forum Warrior Joined: 14 Aug 2011 Status: Offline Points: 304	Posted: 12 Jul 2012 at 10:01
	Training time is only thing that is important, not gold or basic res expenses.In that aspect training t1 units is always waste of time.For exmpl you can use 10 min to train t2 unit or you can use 8 min to train t1 unit that has only 50% battle stats of t2 unit.

Captain Ganoes Paran Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Wordsmith Joined: 23 Jan 2012 Status: Offline Points: 158	Posted: 12 Jul 2012 at 11:03
	training time is more important , to make a large army you'll need months and if you take part on tourneys you'll need even more time

jordigui Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Wordsmith Joined: 20 Jun 2010 Status: Offline Points: 157	Posted: 12 Jul 2012 at 11:23
	We will see if the new weapons and armours bring significant changes to all these ratios ... things can change quite a lot! TH

The_Dude Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Postmaster General Joined: 06 Apr 2010 Location: Texas Status: Offline Points: 2396	Posted: 12 Jul 2012 at 15:45
	I'm in the training time school of thought. Building T2 gets more firepower on the field faster than building T1.

Darkwords Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Postmaster General Joined: 23 May 2011 Status: Offline Points: 1005	Posted: 12 Jul 2012 at 17:18
	Training time is very important, but if you bother using sov recruitment, then after a tourney or war you are probably best producing T1 as you can get more defence value for your money. But if peacetime is short or if there is an upcoming tourney and you have a reasonable ammount of gold to spare then T2 is always better. However, if you are a relatively new player then advanced resources will also be a concern in regard to T2, especially T2 Human Cavalry.