• Good day, Stranger! — Are you new to our forums?

    Have I seen you here before? To participate in or to create forum discussions, you will need your own forum account. Register your account here!

Market value ratio highly inaccurate?

Status
Not open for further replies.

DeletedUser1353

Guest
I will try to explain one more time what population and culture is, but at this point I'm pretty sure the coin will never fall down until the developers change these market ratios themselves.

Our manufacturing buildings don't really add value, nor do they have any fixed operating costs, they just convert Coins and Supplies into a different form. If you look at the two day cycle for an unboosted level 4 manufacturing building then you'll find that the ratios are exactly 1:4:16, and in the long run those variable costs will swamp the fixed costs.

You seem to think population and culture is a "pay once and then forget" currency. But it's really not. Even though you dont pay it manually like with tools and coins the residences and culture buildings will always be there and take up space that could be used for more manufactories or workshops.

I will try to make an example:

My gem manufactory is currently making 796 gems/3h. It takes up 1879 population, 457 culture and takes up 20 squares in my village. These are facts.
Now, if I traded my gems for marble according to the market ratios I would get 796*16=12736 marble/3h.
This costs me about 6k tools and 60k coins /3h.
To cover this cost I would need 2 workshops creating bread. But let's go with 6 workshops just for fun (cause we all like to have fun #kazookid :D).

Now let's look at the production from my marble manufactory: It makes 501 marble/3h, takes up 775 population, 154 culture and takes up 12 spaces in my town. This costs me pretty much nothing in tools though, so let's say I cover this cost with only quests to give the marble manufactory some more chances.

Now let's compare!

(tot=total, pop=population, cult=culture, sq=squares)

Gems

Popsq: 1879+471*6=1879+2826=4705 (building + workshops) Let's go with dwarf residences (human): 4705/610=7,71 houses 7,71house*10sq=77,1popsq.
Cultsq:
(manufactory+workshop/s+residence/s) 457+169*6+217*3,08=1632 culttot, with central places this makes 1632/1400=1,17 central places, 20sq*1,17=23,3 cultsqtot.
Sqtot: 20(buildingspace)+77,1(popsq)+23,3(cultsq)+12*6(workshops)=192,4 sqtot.

Phew! Turns out my gem manufactory takes up about 192 squares depending a bit on how effective I am with quests and tool production. The more effective you are, the less workshops you need.

Now let's do the same thing for marble.

Marble

Popsq: 775. 775/610=1,27 houses, 1,27*10sq=12,7popsq
Cultsq
: (manufactory+workshop/s+residence/s) 154+0+217*1,27=430culttot, with central places this makes 430/1400=0,31
20sq*0,31=6,2 cultsq.
Sqtot:
12+12,7+6,2=30,9 sqtot

Now we know the space required for maintaining these 2 manufactories, so let's compare their efficiency.

prod3= production/3h

Gems: 796prod3/192,4sq=4,1 prod3/sq
Marble:
501prod3/30,9sq=16,2 prod3/sq

Now if I trade all my gems for marble I would get a space efficency of 4,1*16=65,6 prod3/square. So trading gems for marble is about 65,6/16,2=4 times more effective then actually creating them from producing marble yourself.

Sadly though, not everyone is like katwijk here and accepts those trades so you will have to make them 3 star to lure in potentional traders.

Maybe I should also mention that in this example my gemboost is actually lower than my marble boost. :) So it could be even more unfair.


and/or to buy Knowledge Points so that they can run up against the end game brick wall all that much sooner.

You make it sound like reaching the end of the techtree is a bad thing, lol.


The availability of Tournaments will turn the Tier3 equation on it's head anyway, because all boosts will cap at 700%, rather quickly, and folks will have Knowledge Points and to spare.

You seem very proud of the fact that you know the boost cap is at 700%, you mention it in every post nowadays, well congratulations for knowing this. However even if the boosts are at 700% it will barely change anything.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser

Guest
Isolating Fixed Costs and Variable Costs are well established business accounting principles. They're by no means perfect, but the strengths and weakness of using breakeven points, when comparing various alternatives, is well understood.

Likewise for property costs. It may well be that your factory and/or distribution centers should simply be torn down, and repurposed.

If we wanted to use a more complex model than just evaluating trades based on their variable costs, the first place we'd have to look would be the fluctuations in demand that occur each time a new chapter is released. Those of us who are comfortable with spreadsheets and inventory management would make a killing, but it wouldn't be good for the game. I can go play the stock market if that's what I'm after.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Katwijk, I sometimes am genuinely concerned with your health. Arguing tangential arguments, ignoring the majority etc.

But not today!
Today, you got me!

All you have to do to prove me completely and devastatingly wrong, is demonstrate that the fixed costs should be included, as they are significant. It does involve some math, but I am sure you are up for it! After all, it was me that said math doesn't lie, so I can't back down now.

So I looked up "what is a significant percentage" . Wiki says 5%, so lets go with that. I would have said 10%, but hey. I am confident you can't even meet 5%, so I will give you that one. For this to matter to anyone, you would have to play for 6 months or more, but for you, lets say 3 months, give you a better chance.

So show me the math that says that over a 3 month period, including the fixed costs would make more than a 5% difference. I am betting you can't. Prove me wrong, get a win on the books!

Edited: Zanyah - 2016-05-09
Reason 1: Poster should have used the Report function.
Reason 2: Inappropriate Content
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser

Guest
If the fixed costs behaved DIFFERENTLY than the variable costs, then we'd have to worry about them, and account for them each time a new chapter was released. But, so long as the fixed costs escalate at vaguely the same rate that the variable costs escalate, which they do, then the only effect of depreciation would be to move the breakeven point by a few weeks, one way or the other.

To me the obvious approach is to simply focus on fixed costs as our criteria for the evaluation of trades, which is precisely the approach that's being used in Elvenar.

Very much to the point, Forge of Empires started out with 1:2 value ratios, and when those ballooned out of reason they added secondary goods, and started flattening the ratios. FoE STILL isn't using a *** rating system, but I expect that they'll get there within a few months. Take a peek at the awful mess that Elvenar has wisely avoided.
https://forum.us.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/new-ranking-calculations.13466/
The values can be seen below:
Bronze Age - 2.5
Iron Age - 3
Early Middle Age - 3.5
High Middle Age - 4
Late Middle Age - 4.5
Colonial Age - 5
Industrial Age - 5.5
Progressive Era - 6
Modern Era - 11.5
Postmodern Era - 12.5
Contemporary Era - 13.5
Tomorrow - 19.5
The Future - 21

The base value starts at 2.5 in Bronze Age and increases by 0.5 with each era. Modern Era introduces refined goods, so the value of the respective good is added to the base value (for example for Modern Era it is the base value of Modern Era, which is 6.5 + the base value of Colonial Era - 5, hence the total value of 11.5). Tomorrow introduces re-refined goods (base value of Tomorrow is 8 + the value of the refined good from Modern Era gives 19.5 in total).

The upshot is that we have to use fansites, such as http://foe.dppro.nl/index.php?l=tools&s=eerlijkehandel to facilitate trading, and it's a mess.

If you want to go even further afield, clear over to Worlds of Warcraft, we use a full-blown auction program to facilitate the trade of hundreds of items, and we use our profits, and the gear that we thereby acquire, to bootstrap the folks that we want to groom for our Raid Teams. See http://auctioneeraddon.com/.

Making trading MORE elaborate is easy. The actual challenge lies in creating a SIMPLE model that's still adequate for our purposes. I think the developers are on the right track with the 1:4:16 ratio based *** rating system for trades, and also with the very delightful use of special Guest Race goods which aren't really goods at all, regardless of their name, but are rather just a fancy way of elaborating the constraints in the Technology Tree.

I completely agree with you that the footprints etc etc etc etc aren't exactly the same from Tier to Tier, nor even 1:4:16, but so what? We can STILL keep it simple, and reasonably fair, by using a two star 1:4:16 fair trade model to indicate like value trades.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser1353

Guest
Katwijk, would you please stop making examples of other games that are not Elvenar here? I have not played FoE and I'm not planning to start playing it. By using other games as examples is only making it clear to me the only reason you're here is to mislead people by blurting out misleading statements.
I've played WoW and that you even compare Elvenar to the WoW AH, they're completely different.

I still stand by that rating the goods only with the tools and coins you pay for them is very very flawed. It doesn't matter if T1 goods costs 1 coin to produce, it would still be a loss to trade it 16 to 1 for T3. Because of all the space it takes up. But I'm pretty sure you have not even bothered to read through my posts, so not sure why I'm still arguing with you.

If you are trolling (Ken M comes to mind), then congrats, you are very succesfull, but please stop. I put down a lot of time in to this.
 

DeletedUser1353

Guest
You keep making great contributions to this thread I see, Katwijk .

To get back on topic:

Producing T1 goods vs trading T3 goods for T1 goods, Part 1

I want to tell you all a story that is about space efficency, a confused dwarf and love.. (ok not really love, sorry). It's about 2 villages: V1 and V2. V1 is trading gems for marble, planks and steel and has no T1 manufactories on it's own, while V2 is owned by a dwarf who makes his own marble and trades it for planks and steel if he needs to (although he really likes to keep his marble for his own and swims around in it when he can).

Let's say the T3 trading village, lets call it V1, builds a gem manufactory and upgrades it to lvl 15. The only planned use for this one manufactory is to trade gems for T1 goods, so V1 decides to build no T1 manufactories on it's own. The gem manufactory produces 776 gems/3h which V1 then trades for marble which gets him 776*16=12416 marble/3h from this one gem manufactory, if V1:s luck with trades is good.

Now, the marble producing village V2 doesn't want to be worse. This village is owned by a little dwarf who's very proud of the fine marble that he's been producing for generations. He decides to make just as much marble as V1 is trading for with his gem manufactory.
"Let's see, I will need to produce 12416 marble/3h and my lvl 15 marble manufactories produce 501 marble/3h.."

In other words, the dwarf that owns V2 will need to build 25 marble manufactories to gain more marble than V1 with it's single gem manufactory.

***NOTE: The marble boost in this example is: 359% while the gem boost is: 337%! And all these examples are for human style buildings.***

"Oh well, I'm up for a challenge!" the dwarf says, and starts building marble manufactories like his life depended on it. "After all, the tools I pay for marble is barely nothing compared to those fancy gems!"

Finally the marble manufactories are built and upgraded fully. "Now I just need to fill them with population and build some nice central places so I seem a bit more cultural". The dwarf does some fast calculations: 1 marble manufactory uses up 775 population and 154 culture, now I just multiply this by 25. 775*25=19375 and 154*25=3850, seems like the dwarf will need 19375 population to fill his marble mines. "Good thing I have these dwarven residences that can take up to 610 population in each!"
The dwarf would need 19375/610=31,76.. residences, let's make it 32. These would decrease the culture further with 32*217 (the culture needed for a lvl 17 dwarf residence) = 6944. Adding this to the 3850 culture defecit from the marble manufactories makes it a 6944+3850=10794 culture defecit in total. The central places gives the dwarf 1400 culture each, which means he will need 10794/1400=7,71 central places, let's make it 8.

"It's ready!" shouts the dwarf with joy as he looks down at his town, there stands: 25 marble manufactories, producing the finest marble in the land, 32 dwarven residences and 8 central places. This takes up a total space of: 25*12 + 32*10 + 8*20 = 780 squares (about 31 expansions).

Behind the dwarf he hears a "meow", it's his magic talking polarbear (who does indeed sound like a cat), "what about the tools needed meowi?". "Fool!" The dwarf shouts back; "my uncle knows a way to magically produce tools out of thin air, we don't need any workshops in this village."

I added the last part because the cost (tools/coins) for making T1 goods is barely noticable and I want to cut the dwarf some slack.

To be continued... Sorry I don't have the time to finish the story now, but I will put in the village 1 (V1) part later today with the gem manufactory, but some can maybe see where this is going already. :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser1353

Guest
Producing T1 goods vs trading T3 goods for T1 goods, Part 2

Meanwhile in V1 everything was going according to plans. The gem manufactory was finished and it turns out it needs: 1879 population and 457 culture to be maintained. But compared to marble, gems cost a considerable amount of tools and coins to produce: 5820 tools and 58200 coins!

Seems like we need some workshops said the owner of the city (which was a talking coffee bean, lets call it Bean). Bean started doing some calculations on how many workshops he would need, he liked making advanced tools all day long so he would land on about 2000 tools/3h from his lvl 15 workshop. In other words: he would need 3 workshops to cover the costs with him only producing advanced tools, but decides to build a 4th just incase. The coins he'll get from helping neighbors and fellowshipmembers, aswell as from his residences ofcourse.

***Note: the hardest part about calculating the efficiency of your manufactories is valuating how effective you are with your workshops, and other tool income. The more tools you get from quests, from helping other players and usage of the power of provision spell (if you have the MA) the less workshops you'll need.***

1 lvl 15 workshop takes up 471 population and 169 culture, it also takes up 12 squares of space.

Bean now needs to build some residences for his workers, he has 1879 workers in his gem manufactory and 4*471=1884 in his 4 workshops which makes 1879+1884=3763 in total. Just like the dwarf, Bean is using dwarven residences that fit 610 population. He will need 3763/610=6,2 , let's say 7 residences.

Now the bean needs to make the citizens happy with some culture:
457 culture from the gem manufatory + 4*169 culture from the workshops + 7*217 culture from the residences = 2652 culture defecit, he decides to build 2 central places to cover this.

Bean now looks at his little town, there is: 1 gem manufactory, 4 workshops, 7 residences and 2 central places. Which makes a total space of: 20+4*12+7*10+2*20= 178. This is about 7 expansions.

The end.

So let's compare the 2 cities.

One has 780 squares dedicated to making marble, and one has 178 squares dedicated to making gems, that can then be traded into the same amount of marble that the other city is producing.

Is this good game design?

Absolutely not.

How could this happen?

I'm not completely sure tbh, maybe the devs felt like they had to add alot of population and culture to the T1 manufactories so they could compete with the T3 manufactories in "point density", if they have too little population and culture they barely award any points.

An argument we have seen in this thread is variable costs, and that after 1 year the gem manufactory would have used up a whole mountain of tools and coins compared to the marble manufactory. This is flawed however, since by then you would have created several mountains of coins and tools from your residences/workshops/neghborly help/quests etc. It's not like it's hard to come by coins in this game, I personally find myself having to buy KP for coins, otherwise i hit the coin cap, and the workshops are there producing all the time hopefully.

Even though it's a bit more "volatile" (meaning the production varies from player to player, and day to day, depending on what you're producing in it) , a workshop is not much different to manufactory then a residence is. It's there to maintain it's production. 1 day you might need 2 workshops to maintain a manufactory (creating bread/advanced tools) another day you might need 4 (basket of groceries/toolbox).

But when you're using the longer productions in the workshops which leads to less tools/h you're most likely also using long production times in the manufactories aswell, which means they use up less tools/h but also produces less goods.

How can it be fixed?

The reason village 1 can get away with this in this example is because he can trade away 1 gem for 16 marble/steel/planks. Why are people accepting the trades? Because the market ratio says it's "fair".

They need to scale down the ratings to atleast 1:3:9 or even better 1:2:4, instead of the 1:4:16 we have now.

Other things that could be done to balance this would be to either increase the production of the T1 manufactories and/or nerf the production from the T3 and T2 manufactories.

I don't think they should tinker with the population/culture needed for the buildings, since alot of people have built their villages according to these numbers.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser

Guest
An interesting (and hopefully relevant) situation came up for me today. I am currently population and RP bottlenecked. It turns out that selling a 4th lv steel manufactory, gave me 2/3 of the population I needed to get a scrolls manufactory to 5. In making this change my scrolls manufactory increased in production by more than the old steel one, of a good "4" times more valuable.
Admittedly, the scrolls manufactory then took up and additional 5 squares (although I gained 4 from the steel being deleted.., so technically 1?) Even if you say it more than doubles in size, it produces the original scrolls it was before, PLUS around the same as the steel, in the same space, at 4 times the value..
Sure, the gold and tools value is higher, I still think it is a good deal.

The point? Even during your low level buildout, you are better off with the higher tier manufactory. (and only your boosted, obviously!) Besides being mathematically the best thing to do, it is situationally the best thing to do.
 

CrazyWizard

Shaman
Can you ameliorate that fact by giving 3 star deals? Which (I think...) will still be a better deal than building the other manufactories? I guess more math is required to find the break even point of what you HAVE to sell it at to make a profit. So instead of 1:4, you always deal 1:2.5, so the lower levels with take it anyway, as they are flush with lower tier goods anyway..

Those 3 star deals work fine but already proof thats 1:4:16 cannot be marketed.
to add to the problem is the fact that while this works for small numbers. when you need to convert 45k of goods a day it for sure won't work.

Or perhaps he has a MBA and you don't??
I question his MBA degree, and the university issuing the degree as well, they probably need to loose there ability to issue those MBA degrees.

you quickly forget that elvenar aint the world we live in, it has it's own macro economy. it's commodities are:
Supplies, Coins, Goods and one that cannot be forgotten; land, workforce (needs land to live on) and Jobs (factories need land) and entertainment (space needed for culture)

supplies, coins, goods there all shippable and renewable recources, there is just 1 recource that cannot be used and regenerated and thats land. once you reach a certain size thats it. you cannot assimilate your neighbour in this game, or go to war to increase it.

Therefore the most expensive one of them all is space, and thats the one thing the 1:4:16 simply ignores.

Its like telling a farmer that he should give 16 acres of his produce to the other farmer for what he produces on 1 acre. because he spend 16 times more manhours and fertiliser to create the produce, yet the other farmer still wont yield 16 acres of produce to the other farmer. why? well 16 acres of land has value as well which needs to be accounted for into the trade. what that value should be? well in the real world the market will settle that price.

Your MBA graduate just told the other farmer his produce was valued 16 times higher than the other farmers produce, because he spend 16x more manhours and 16x more fertiliser on the goods, but he just ignored the land factor the other farmer needed 16x more land to produce what he asked for since thats only a fixed price and therefore should be ignored., therefore his MBA sucks and should be revoked.
 
Last edited:

DeletedUser1353

Guest
Ok, so I can't belive i haven't noticed this yet: the tool+coin cost for producing goods does NOT go up when your relic boost increases!! I just always assumed the cost would go up a little bit each time my production went up with the relic boost so i didn't really look in to this.

This means that the more the relic boost goes up (all the way to 700%) the more effective the T3 also get compared to the other resources. This is because the tool+coin cost is such a big chunk (workshops) of what it takes to maintain a T3 manufactory.

So at 700% the T3 is even more superior to the other manufactories compared to my other examples. :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:

CrazyWizard

Shaman
Ok, so I can't belive i haven't noticed this yet: the tool+coin cost for producing goods does NOT go up when your relic boost increases!! I just always assumed the cost would go up a little bit each time my production went up with the relic boost so i didn't really look in to this.

This means that the more the relic boost goes up (all the way to 700%) the more effective the T3 also get compared to the other resources. This is because the tool+coin cost is such a big chunk (workshops) of what it takes to maintain a T3 manufactory.

So at 700% the T3 is even more superior to the other manufactories compared to my other examples. :)

Not really every good gets a 700% increase. this evens out the odds

8-16-32
8-32-128

Its still the same 1-2-4 and 1-4-16 ratio.

The ratio doesnt change because of the bonus production modifier.
the cost per goods does drop, but the ratio of cost per good again doesnt.

in a 1-2-4 ratio a city with only tier 3 production would be aprox a good as a city with only tier 1 production.
"space" wise it stays the same. and to me space is the true commodity. as it's the only truly limited commodity in this game.
 

MysticPT

Seeker
I

Gems

Popsq:
1879+471*6=1879+2826=4705 (building + workshops) Let's go with dwarf residences (human): 4705/610=7,71 houses 7,71house*10sq=77,1popsq.
Cultsq:
(manufactory+workshop/s+residence/s) 457+169*6+217*3,08=1632 culttot, with central places this makes 1632/1400=1,17 central places, 20sq*1,17=23,3 cultsqtot.
Sqtot: 20(buildingspace)+77,1(popsq)+23,3(cultsq)+12*6(workshops)=192,4 sqtot.


Marble

Popsq
: 775. 775/610=1,27 houses, 1,27*10sq=12,7popsq
Cultsq
: (manufactory+workshop/s+residence/s) 154+0+217*1,27=430culttot, with central places this makes 430/1400=0,31
20sq*0,31=6,2 cultsq.
Sqtot:
12+12,7+6,2=30,9 sqtot

Gems:
796prod3/192,4sq=4,1 prod3/sq
Marble:
501prod3/30,9sq=16,2 prod3/sq

Now if I trade all my gems for marble I would get a space efficency of 4,1*16=65,6 prod3/square. So trading gems for marble is about 65,6/16,2=4 times more effective then actually creating them from producing marble yourself.

....

This is a good math.
But there's something very important. Is the usage of this material.
At least in my daily life I really need much much more marble.
All this math would be 100 correct if you could use your marble and your gems for the same.

It's a difficult idea here that I'm trying to explain.
Let me give you the limit.
Imagine that the GEMs are not needed at all in the game?

All this math has one more variable in the equation: - usability of the gems and usability of marble.
 

Pauly7

Magus
In either case, this is quoting a deleted user who posted that message in May 2016. I don't even want to study its validity now as surely it must be at least partly out of date.
 

Wibbly Woo

Spellcaster
@Pauly7 Given I believe this is one of the earliest proposals for a change in the “fair” trade ratio from 1:4:16 to 4:6:9, I think it is safe to say it is utterly out of date, and strangely relevant.
 

rock stream

Scholar
Excellent archaeological work MysticPT. Hope you were wearing a N95 dust mask during the evacuation:).
As INNO has never learned to leave well enough alone and has an insatiable appetite for diking round, it is hard to trust the math/elevations from old posts. I've been burned that way.
The current rating system for trades is in my top 5 things I find ill conceived in this game.
 

Deleted User - 1634960

Guest
This is a good math.
But there's something very important. Is the usage of this material.
At least in my daily life I really need much much more marble.
All this math would be 100 correct if you could use your marble and your gems for the same.

It's a difficult idea here that I'm trying to explain.
Let me give you the limit.
Imagine that the GEMs are not needed at all in the game?

All this math has one more variable in the equation: - usability of the gems and usability of marble.
More important than the usage is the AGE of this material. This thread dates before the change to the Trader that addressed the ratio problem. Please do not resurrect threads unless your comment gives new insight into the issue. ;)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top