Very good analysis, Pale Horse...
In this thread the author claims the amount of gold gathered depends not only on the amount of tiles in between, but also on the map size. Did you notice that in your tests?

I hope that makes sence to somebody lol :P

so what your saying is if u micro your carts (you wouldnt but im just saying) if you went and made that cart trail all around the map for ages after collecting at a market, by the time you drop it off you will have a significant increase in the amount of gold recieved than what is stated on your allies market?

If so, nice find

Thx Qaz.

No, I did not test maps other than an 8 player. Wow, that complicates things some with respect to knowingly the actual efficiency numbers. I think the general conclusions will be the same.

He also did not calculate cart*seconds (similar to vil-sec).

Distance between markets is the only issue, not the distance traveled, which should be 'microed' to be a straight line to maximize efficiency.

[This message has been edited by Pale Horse (edited 01-20-2005 @ 11:25 AM).]

Great job, Pale Horse!!

I'll show it to one of my regular allies, who always demands the markets to be as close to each other as possible, for "maximum efficiency".

So, it turns out the longer routes to be most efficient, if you can prevent trade cart raiding along the route, of course.

However, it does make sense the distance in tiles to be relative to the map size. As far as I understood from chess' thread, the larger the map, the smaller the trade profit from a given distance. So, if this is correct, your numbers should be even higher for a map for 4 players.

Pale Horse:
Nice to see you back at AoKH(or at least at G&SD)! You probably won't remember me as I was only a lowly rook back in your days of glory:P. Anyways hope you will be sticking around.

Hi xingjianma and thanks.

Interesting. I had always known that trade carts were more profitable (not just that they got more gold) for longer distances, but I didn’t know by how much. I think the max amount of gold a TC can carry is 433 with Spanish on a giant map and one TC on each end. It’s immensely profitable (but unrealistic).

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No. You can “trail it around” for an hour without getting an increase. The game does not take into consideration how long the trade cart takes to get there, the set amount of gold never changes (so you want a very straight TR free of obstacles. Having to go around a forest doesn’t get you more gold).

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I’m hoping that that’s not true, but if it is, is it enough to make smaller maps more profitable? Does it just counteract the lack of increase it could get from having less tiles to increase upon?
*Goes to do tests, but probably will not have responded before anybody else*.

I think it gets more profitable in smaller maps, beacause it count no the tiles but the percent of the map the markets are. So, in a Giant map x quantity of tiles are the 10% and in a Small one y is the 10%. In the Small map the trip is much shorter, but it gives the same amount of gold because it's the same percent.

No.

Trading is post profitable over the longest possible course on the biggest possible map. I think it is true that for the same number of tiles a smaller map gives you SLIGHTLY more gold, but the increase in having markets further apart is much greater and more than compensates for it. Try on all map sizes putting markets in the corners and sending trade carts between them, giant map will give the most gold per second (i think ).

this has already been tested before and proven that giant=the most gold,IIRC.im to lazy to search for the post tho

Yeah. Giant is the most efficient, but you were right that map size does affect the amount of gold per tile.

Nice data, Pale.

Market tip: when building a new market to increase trading distance and therefore increase gold intake, don't forget to delete your old market.

Be sure new market is fully built before deleting old. I once eagerly deleted my old market when new was 97% complete. All my trade carts stopped dead in their tracks. I had to micro each of them individually to get them moving again.

For beginners:

If your new market is completely finished, then when you delete your old markets, your carts will automatically go to the new market. However, your allies carts will go directly to his or her market and then stand idle, which may block your carts from getting through to trade. So communicate with your ally to keep the gold flowing.

Great job! It confirms what most people have already known, but I didn't realize it was THAT big of a difference.

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That's not just for beginners! That's a tip even some rooks need to know!

Another is that if your trade is getting attacked and you can't stop them soon, it's far easier to have one player delete his or her markets than to stop each cart. All of the carts will return to the non-deleted markets (or stay at the deleted ones) and you can double-click to select them all and send them back to some new markets once the threat is dealt with. It may lose you gold while your carts are idle, but it's better than losing all of your carts!