posted 01-07-02 00:13 AM CT (US)
THE SHORT VERSION:Build a market as soon as you get to feudal and sell 300 stone ASAP. Buy food and wood with the proceeds. Your expensive market will turn from a short-term liability into a powerful asset at once.
THE LONG VERSION:
1. The Cost.
Saracens lack any Dark Age bonus. They lag behind fast civilizations when the Feudal Age begins. They get no economic bonus in the Feudal Age, either, until and unless they build a market. A market costs 175 wood and a minute's worth of villager work. Building a market costs a lot for a civilization already outpaced by enemies. So, how soon does the Saracen market bonus repay this expense?
The method chosen here to measure that "payback" uses the "gold standard." This calculates the "villager seconds" needed to gather the resources being measured. Then, the gold that could be collected in the same "time" is figured. Building time is also "priced" with the Saracen gold gather rate.
When market food is cheaper than farm food on average, the Saracen begins to benefit from the bonus. Before that point, the market is a cost.
Machiavelli_IUB's "The REAL Real Cost of Resources" from Mr. Fixit Online was used for these calculations. No upgraded gather rates were used.
These figures put the "cost" of building a Saracen market at $216.06. That cost is added to all the gold spent for food purchases. This total cost is then divided by the number of food purchases. This yields an average cost per 100 food that includes the market building cost.
The method used for "pricing" farm food was similar. However, the whole wood and labor cost of the farm was not applied. One-hundred food is a little more than 57 percent of the food that an unupgraded farm produces. So, the proportion (100/175 or 4/7ths) of the wood and labor cost was assigned to the farm food price.
The "price" of farm food is $151.94 by this method. The price of Saracen market food falls to $152.21 with five purchases with gold. The sixth purchase yields an average of $146.01. Therefore, the Saracen market bonus does not "kick in" until after 600 food is bought. The average at 1,000 food purchased is $136.01.
Selling Saracen stone profoundly changes and improves this performance.
Selling at least 300 stone is the key to exploiting the Saracen market bonus, in my opinion.
2. Why Stone?
Saracens are the only civilization that can make a profit in early feudal by selling stone. Digging up 100 stone "costs" $105 in labor. A Saracen can sell 100 stone for $123 gold in the first transaction. The next sale is for $122, then $121, then $2 less per transaction after that. For comparison purposes, Turkish gold miners can dig up $119 in gold in the time it takes for Saracen stone miners to dig up 100 stone. Therefore, Saracen stone miners can "produce" more gold that bonused Turkish gold miners for a short time. They produce more gold than typical miners for long after that.
The benefit of stone selling can be measured. The method used here was to subtract the "profit" of each stone sale from the total gold spent on food, based on the assumption that a Saracen would use gold obtained from stone sales for his early food purchases.
The figures below should be self explanatory by now. The are rounded to the nearest whole-dollar amount. Note that the Saracen is assumed to stop selling stone after selling 500 stone.
Transactions -- Price paid -- Total Spent -- Market Cost, per transaction -- Stone Profit -- Avg. Cost, overall.
1 -- $105 -- $105 -- $216 -- $17 -- $304
2 -- $107 -- $212 -- $108 -- $16 -- $197
3 -- $109 -- $321 -- $72 -- $15 -- $163
4 -- $111 -- $432 -- $54 -- $13 -- $146
5 -- $113 -- $545 -- $43 -- $11 -- $138
6 -- $115 -- $660 -- $36 -- 0 -- $134
7 -- $118 -- $778 -- $31 -- 0 -- $132
8 -- $120 -- $898 -- $27 -- 0 -- $130
9 -- $122 -- $1020 -- $24 -- 0 -- $129
10 -- $124 -- $1144 -- $22 -- 0 -- $129
11 -- $126 -- $1270 -- $20 -- 0 --$128
12 -- $128 -- $1398 -- $18 -- 0 -- $128
13 -- $130 -- $1528 -- $17 -- 0 -- $129
14 -- $132 -- $1660 -- $15 -- 0 -- $129
15 -- $134 -- $1794 -- $14 -- 0 -- $129
16 -- $136 -- $1930 -- $14 -- 0 -- $130
17 -- $139 -- $2069 -- $13 -- 0 -- $130
18 -- $141 -- $2210 -- $12 -- 0 -- $131
19 -- $143 -- $2353 -- $11 -- 0 -- $131
20 -- $145 -- $2498 -- $11 -- 0 -- $132
21 -- $147 -- $2645 -- $10 -- 0 -- $133
22 -- $149 -- $2794 -- $10 -- 0 -- $133
23 -- $151 -- $2945 -- $9 -- 0 -- $134
Selling stone early has another significant advantage that is harder to measure. Crowding at the mining pit hurts efficiency. By starting off with a stone mine, the Saracens can relieve crowding when they build a gold mine. The gold mine could and should start after necessary buildings are up and stone profits taper off.
Note that the Saracens get 200 starting stone. Assume they start mining stone in the Dark Age and continue during Feudal Transition. They should have another 100 stone mined by the time the market is built. Sale of this 300 stone will bring in $365 gold. That sum is more than enough to buy 300 food. That much food could create an temporarily unusable surplus. Also, all this market building and mining is wood-intensive. There is little use to plentiful food if there is no wood for military buildings to produce troops.
One way to avoid these problems is to buy wood.
3. Buying Wood
Price calculations show that the price of 100 wood is $111. The Saracens can buy 100 wood for $105 at starting prices. Saracens can cost-effectively buy 300 wood before double-bit ax is researched.
4. Stone and Gold Depletion.
Tests in scenario editor show that 1,000 stone can be sold, then bought back later for a net loss of $101 gold. Tests also show that 2,300 food can be bought and then sold back later for a net loss of $230 gold. These losses are more than offset by the gold a Saracen could collect by selling any wood surpluses, for instance.
5. Other Implications
The cheapness of Saracen scouts and upgrades of all kinds should be noted. At 80 food a scout, a Saracen scout costs very little compared to the farm-food expense. The same is true of villagers and, to a lesser extent, men-at-arms and spears.
Most early upgrades cost food more than anything else.
It should also be noted that the Saracens should have food in large enough quantities to permit the production of a larger-than-usual number of scouts in early Feudal.
The benefits of intensive mining for market use should also be noted. Saracens can produce archers with gold. Archers do not require food, so producing archers requires less gold for food purchases. Food can be purchased either before or after archer production.
If this was 1250 AD, your civ would be in Mongolia.
I'm single-player only, so I know nothing. Ain't free speech great?
Hunters all their lives - Mongols, CavArchers & Hussars
Kagemusa - Japanese links
Civs for a new player & Arch Enemies
[This message has been edited by Doug Thompson (edited 01-07-2002 @ 00:16 AM).]
