Building Efficiency Question

Hi there,

I haven't played in a while, so I'm re-reading all the guide info, and the Building Efficiency section is hurting my brain - so I was hoping someone could clarify.

The guide says the following about buildings:

The numbers listed in this section would be for the first building you
construct. Your Internal Affairs Advisor will help you to understand the benefits of your land.
Unless otherwise specified, these buildings have a maximum effect of 25 times the number listed
below. With normal building efficiency, this maximum is reached by dedicating 50% of your land to
that building.


I don't get it. If Mills (for example) have a 3% base effect for Gold Exploration costs, with a 75% maximum, then isn't 3 * 25 = 75? That's 25% of total buildings. Where exactly is the 50% land dedication number coming from? I can understand dedicating 50% of my land if my Building Efficiency was also 50% (in order to get the usual 100% value), but presently I'm just not understanding this.


Secondly, I would clarify about jobs and employment.

So a building provides 25 jobs
A peasant can work 1.5 jobs.

Now what I'm not clear on is...is that 1.5 jobs the MAXIMUM a peasant can do, or is it ALWAYS that? What I mean by that question is...since each employed peasant generates 2.75 GC, is it the case that...

1. For 25 jobs, I can employ 17 peasants at 2.75 gc each (46.75 gc) and 100% Building Efficiency.
2. For 25 jobs, I can employ 25 peasants at 2.75 gc each (68.75 gc) and 100% Building Efficiency.
3. Both of the above.

Or in other words, I've asking if the 1.5 jobs thing is for optimization of Building Efficiency, while still allowing for the possibility for each Peasant to not need to work overtime (e.g. 1 job per peasant).

It just strikes me as odd that the standard value would be 1.5 without allowing for the possibility of 1.0, and it's a weird divisor to boot. So clarification on this would be appreciated.

Thanks!
-G

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gidoza

I don't get it. If Mills (for example) have a 3% base effect for Gold Exploration costs, with a 75% maximum, then isn't 3 * 25 = 75? That's 25% of total buildings. Where exactly is the 50% land dedication number coming from?

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The formula isn't linear, though. The first 1% of land you devote gives you a 3% effect, the next 1% somewhere around 2.9%, and so forth. The formula is somewhere around the wiki.

Quote:

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I can understand dedicating 50% of my land if my Building Efficiency was also 50% (in order to get the usual 100% value), but presently I'm just not understanding this.

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If you have less than 100% BE, you can't get the max effects.

Quote:

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Secondly, I would clarify about jobs and employment.

1. For 25 jobs, I can employ 17 peasants at 2.75 gc each (46.75 gc) and 100% Building Efficiency.
2. For 25 jobs, I can employ 25 peasants at 2.75 gc each (68.75 gc) and 100% Building Efficiency.
3. Both of the above.

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3.

If you have the 25 peasants, then the 25 peasants will each work 1 job and you'll be able to tax them for 2.75 gc each. When you have more than 25 peasants (if you build houses, are gnome, or whatever) per built acre, you get unemployment, which is very rare in Utopia. Unemployed peasants give you less gold (I think 1 gc/peasant?).

If you have less than 25 peasants, each peasant can cover an extra .5 jobs (i.e. 2 peasants can cover 3 jobs). Since you're taxing peasants, you're still getting 2.75 gc for each PEASANT (not job filled); the reason why peasants can do 1.5 jobs is so that your Building Efficiency doesn't drop if you have more jobs than peasants (which is almost always the case), up to a limit. Only when you have less than 2/3rds of jobs covered (assuming no prisoners to pick up the slack) you start seeing a drop in BE.

Thank you North Southland, I follow on all points. Two follow-up questions.

You mentioned the formula, I found it as follows:

Percentage Based Buildings = Base Effect * BE * MIN(50%, % of building) * (100% - MIN(50%, % of building))

Unfortunately, I think my brain isn't working again because I can't make sense of the two MIN functions at the end. Would it be possible to provide a couple of examples just to clue me in? (I seem to recall doing the math myself some years ago with this exact formula - and yes I'm aware that there's things that can just TELL me what the result is, but I just prefer to understand myself what's going on rather than let the calculator do it for me, if possible.)

Second follow-up question - I didn't see this in the wiki, but if your BE is above 100%, can the building bonuses exceed the stated maximum? (e.g. For Mills again - is the 75% max then multiplied by BE, or is it limited to having less buildings required to reach the maximum?)

Thank you again!
-G

The MIN elements in the formula just ensure that the effect doesn't go over the max. I think it's not strictly accurate for the TD loss reduction, because that one is capped at 95% instead of base effect*25 (which would be 100).

If you ignore the MIN, you see it creates a "factor" that is [building%]*[100-building%]. So if you have 20%, it's 20*80=16. If you have 10%, it's 90*10=9%. If you have 2%, it's 2*98=1.96%. But if you have 60%, it would be 60*40=24% so instead it's 50*50=25%.

As you can see, without the MIN elements--you would actually start to LOSE effect by adding buildings. That don't make a lick of sense.

On the second question, the max effect is the max effect. With higher BE, you can just get there with less. But note the opposite: if you have UNDER 100% BE, you CANNOT reach the max effect.

@Andurilas - Thank you, that clarifies things for me! :)