Advice on investing your Books, for different goals.

[Danrelle]

I'm sorry if these answers already exist somewhere else. I'd like to know your opinion about how to invest Books.

I figured so far only that if I want to increase the effect in some particular area by a factor of 2, I should invest more books by a factor of 4.
If all bonuses from different areas of Sci were equally useful for my build, it would be most efficient to invest equally in each field. However, some bonuses are better than others, so I'd like some advice.

What ratio of Alc/Tools/Pop/Food/Mil/Thievery/Channeling do you recommend for a Heavy Attacker, A/t, A/m and T/M? And if it is not too much to ask, please motivate or explain your choice.

*gears up... shuts eyes... sets up hearing/reading aids*

[E_Boko]

heavy alc, tool, and pop. then minor in food and military. thievery and channeling are icing for pure A's imo. but always boost econ first. that helps you draft more and rebuild faster.

[NoseBlood]

im only 'pumping' pop and thive/mage sci, w/e hybrid im playing. Rest i get from learns.. if you need thive sci do human/halfers. If you need mag sci do elf/fearys. Dorfs pretty good for food/be. And most ppl have alot of alch sci so ^^

[Danrelle]

*still waiting for ratios and for motivations of specific choices*

@NoseBlood: Thank you for your answer, but my question is more about how to distribute the Books and what ratio would be your goal, rather than about how to obtain the Books (via Paying or Learning or Amazon...).

[Darkz Azn]

25-10-15-5-10-10-15

this is usually a typical one for top kd... varies per race/setup/time ...

right out of protection ... you dun need food/mil sci as much as you income/runes sci

week 1 - week 11 income/pop/be come are vital ... after week11 income and pop are the only ones you really need to maximize nw growth

use your brain obviously .. if your starving get some food sci ... if you planning to dice .. get some mage sci ... if ya goin into a long war get some gain sci ... if you getting NS badly ... you should really get some thievery sci =)

odd

PS. if ya undead and have food sci ... odd

[Danrelle]

odd? Sounds plain and simple to me. You see, asking an obvious question can make sense! For me, for example, I hear my own thought processes all the time. So from time to time I like to hear other ones. I make them friendly with each other and maybe make them mate and have offspring.

I hope you do the same. Otherwise.. odd.

PS. Thank you very much for the answer. It makes a lot of sense and I appreciate the extra detail about timings. I also appreciate your advice for people to use their brains. It is very useful. A little obvious, but hey.. odd stays odd. Odd is Cute!

[flutterby]

Kev,
Not sure about that, depending on activity I usually have them put equal amounts into alch/be/pop because it is easier in the long run. Granted, I'm a sage so my sci's are absolutely insane in general this age..

PS: Your face is odd Kev.

[Darkz Azn]

=)

the general idea for science is give you the additional boost, mainly income ... the idea is pretty much like compound interest. the bigger you get, the more sci pay out

like for instance thievery/mage sci ... if you have 2tpa with 50% thieve sci that is equal to 3tpa mod ... but if you have 3tpa with 100% thievery, you will have 6mod tpa. in theory, you save yourself 3 units per acres to uses on ur army or peons to make more gc =)

but most kingdom theory on sciences are different but generally the same ... I usually go income heavy follow by pop than the rest ....

[Darkz Azn]

actually that a bad example ...

2tpa with 50% t-sci = 3mod
2tpa with 100% t-sci = 4mod

you save yourself 1 ppa =)

[Danrelle]

I suppose if one considers Merchant as the best personality because cash is always good, one might argue the same for the Income bonus of Science.

The only question is if after some books in Income, it wouldn't be a bigger income boost to spend books on the Pop science, rather than getting the tiny increase that you'll get spending books in Alchemy.

PS. flutterby is cute. But she'll tell you otherwise.

[Palem]

Unless you're pumping out ungodly like books, your pop will boost up fairly slowly, thus increasing your income slowly as well.

[Danrelle]

Unless you're pumping out ungodly like books, your pop will boost up fairly slowly, thus increasing your income slowly as well.

It's still a boost. And so is BE, if you're using Banks. After a certain number of books the income bonus per book in Alchemy decreases significantly as well (exponentially). While if you haven't pumped any Tools or Pop, those would have good bonuses/book, but would not directly influence income.

Let me reformulate my question in a clearer way: If I were to be interested only in maximizing my Income, and nothing else. At what point would it become favorable to switch to Pop or to BE because of the diminishing increase per book in Alchemy? And which one of them would be best for an income increase?
Assuming, for instance, that I run 20% Banks and I am non-Human, non-Merchant and non-Sage.

[John Snowstorm]

The multiplier for income is a little over double the multiplier for pop, but pop can be seen as entirely extra peasants, so if you are at a point where ~45% of your population is peasantry or less the next book into pop will increase your income more than the next book in income.

In addition; pop is going to become much more useful to you down the line when you draft up heavily, when you have 2peas/a income sci is practically worthless, so again you will want to weight pop a bit for that factor.

Any maximisation of income is inherently dependent on draft rate.

[TommyB]

What good is pop science though if you're short 30k peasants ? It just increases a hypothetical max number of population that you will probably never reach before the end of the war. In this scenario income is infinitely better than pop because it lowers the amount of peasants you need to pay the wages.

It really depends on the type of player and playstyle too.. if you're the kind that gets fireballed every war you should favor income.. if you get chained to below 300 acres then pump everything in population. ;-)

[Danrelle]

Any maximisation of income is inherently dependent on draft rate.

That is hard to deny. For extremely low or high drafts one of the sci bonuses will become absolutely dominant. However. For a 'normal' draft percentage, plus or minus 10%, I don't believe that the impact on the value of Sciences is significant.

In short, yes, the draft matters, but in the relevant interval Sci value is only weakly dependent on it.

Thank you for your answer though. You make very good points.

@ TommyB: You make an excellent point yourself. In war, as you are underpoped most of the times, income science becomes more important than pop. Pop actually helps to get you overpopulated by chains, as I understand it. *EDIT* wait, I got it wrong. Since overpopulation has to do only with the percentage of pezzies over threshold, pop science doesn't affect overpop at all. So yeah, I agree with you, pop sci helps when you are chained down because it helps you sustain a higher draft.

How about compared to BE, considering you might run some 10% Banks during war as well. If I want to tweak sciences for a Warring KD that plays long wars, do you think I should focus on Pop that helps chain targets, or on Income that helps all the rest who have gained big amounts of land?