Diary of a Dwarf Merchant Attacker

[Twyla]

Your wrong. You base your asumption on certain % of stables neaded to mount all elites, this number will change radically and pretty soon as you kick up your draft greatly diminishing efectivnes of stables.

The numbers don't lie. Insofar as Dwarves (or any other Race with 6 or less OP/unit) are concerned, Stables are a smart choice. For Races such as Orcs or Undead (with their 9 OP Elites), what you say is entirely true - the OP boost from TGs is more significant than what Horses offer. But we're talking Dwarves here.

Sciences have been between Active and Accelerated since OOP. The only Dspecs I've trained since OOP were with the free training credits from attacking - everything I've actually spent money on has been Zerks (and a few Thieves).

[nooblet]

Stables aren't supposed to be a building to replace training grounds... if you want to maximize your OPA, build both. Just know that the more elites you intend to send out, the more stables you need, while TGs enhance your zerks regardless of how much you send. I'd rather use the stable lands for hospitals, gs, barracks, and other % buildings that the dwarves can use very well.

[nooblet]

Addendum: It's more useful to think of Stables as a building that produces 60 raw offense per building, that's immune to BE, than to think of it as a % building. There are additional quirks to how they work, like the time needed to fill them up, their losses in combat, and being able to retain the extra offense after the stables are lost. But it doesn't matter what strength unit you're using, as long as you have offensive units to mount - nor does it matter that you're mounting everything, since armies change size considerably during war... as does military per acre, if a province is expanding rapidly. The cases for and against stables are more complex than "build x% stables to increase your offense y%".

EDIT: I don't know if you forgot to mention putting your military wages up to 200% the first moment you can, but new players should definitely know that.

[Coren]

LOL, you silly, silly person.

TheCock is never wrong.

Except this time he is wrong ;) Mixed TGs and stables is superior for maximising OPA. It is optimisation problem with complex equation.

docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoizKEmfNQIBdE5NbWFfR2V5WnVBMHZlUXp6MGJWWkE#gid=0

Ok. There is a minor catch. That math doesn't account for horses increasing NW. The increasing NW will reduce OPNW that is important factor for an attacker. Maybe even more important than OPA.

[octobrev]

There is a lot your static calculations cannot account for. Utopia is dynamic and thecock is correct that training grounds are superior.

[Coren]

Neither is the math static. I can calculate pretty accurately any situation where I want to absolutely maximize my offense.

Only "static" assumption there is that I would have full stables. Surprisingly that is true nearly always when I want the max offense.

There is an error in the math. I made it before I learned that OME was partially additive. But that will only minimally improve stables over TGs (if OME>100%).

But as a hint to those who claim TG >> stables: You need to study the game mechanism a bit more. I haven't yet seen anyone running the best strategy to maximize the offense. But I won't steal your pleasure to study the game that you claim to have mastered completely.

[Twyla]

Oh, for the love of....

Let's show you the hard numbers so maybe you can understand this.

%-based Building Effects are calculated as: Base Effect * BE * % of building * (100% - % of building). This is known as 'diminishing returns', which should be a fairly easy concept to understand - the more of a particular building you have, the less effective each % becomes.

Now for the hard numbers:

The build I presented is

• 3000 Zerks supplying 18,000 raw OP
• 50 Stables (8.1%) adding 3000 raw OP
• 70 TGs (11.4%) @ 123% BE add 18.635% OP

For a total of 24,913.4 OP

The build you keep saying is better is

• 3000 Zerks supplying 18,000 raw OP
• 120 TGs (19.5%) @ 123% BE add 28.962% OP

For a total of 23,213.1 OP

That's 1700.3 (7.325%) MORE OP by including Stables in the build vs all Training Grounds. And the only reason it's even THAT close is due to the 123% BE. As BE drops, that gap becomes much wider.

By the time BE drops to 100%, it's 24,181.5 OP vs 22,239 OP - 8.735% more OP by running Stables and TGs together vs TGs alone.

Also factor in increased ME from 200% Wages (as it takes effect) and the gap grows even wider.

[Bishop]

Neither is the math static. I can calculate pretty accurately any situation where I want to absolutely maximize my offense.

Only "static" assumption there is that I would have full stables. Surprisingly that is true nearly always when I want the max offense.

There is an error in the math. I made it before I learned that OME was partially additive. But that will only minimally improve stables over TGs (if OME>100%).

But as a hint to those who claim TG >> stables: You need to study the game mechanism a bit more. I haven't yet seen anyone running the best strategy to maximize the offense. But I won't steal your pleasure to study the game that you claim to have mastered completely.

Your calc is static because nothing is happening to your province. You need to factor in growth and chaining.

[DHaran]

I have alerted TheRock that his omniscience has been challenged.

[TheRock]

Might double-check your own numbers. For the first few % of lands, Training Grounds outshine Stables. But at roughly 3.5%, even with the Dwarf's +20% BE, their effects balance - 1% Stables vs +1% Training Grounds. Beyond 5% total lands, the raw 14.3% OP gain from every Zerk having a Horse far outshines the diminishing returns for TGs.

If you've noticed from the OP, the Stables become even more effective because the OP gains from Horses multiply with those from TGs - and the build utilizes both.

I don't need to re-check my numbers - they're right. When you have the right answer, you don't look for new ways to be right.

Instead of reviewing your numbers and giving silly answers, spend more time trying to understand why you're wrong. Or, instead, keep running stables and give me your location - I'd be happy to empirically show you why TGs crush Stables :)

There is only one situation in which a Dwarf would run Stables - after they've already maxed TGs. TGs beat Stables for literally every other situation for a Dwarf.

[Ethan]

Around 30 OPA is reasonable place to be for a oop prov, but is nowhere near the total you expect by mid age. If you try it again with a dwarf packing even only 60 OPA (before stables/tgs) your going to see a huge difference. Also the increased NW matters once the game has slowed down - NW is the *real* size.

It also gets to be an even bigger advantage to TGs when you realize the same ideas can work with *forts* as well as TG - use the forts to free up units from defense, make them offense instead. So while 30% TGs probably isn't better than a TG/Stable split... 20% TG / 10% Forts almost certainly is better than either. (And some precise value depending on NW and unit strength and target DPNW and all this is better still. I believe the resultant optimization function is an insoluble quintic, though that was with multiplicative ME, not additive. So... guess and check to optimize.)

So - ya, stables are better at OP. But how fast is your offense coming in? For non-dwarf, even with the lack of BE bonus, the raze cost and build cost means TGs just make more sense, even though stables are better at first. And once offense is in, stables are almost always awful for dwarf cause of the BE bonus for TGs.


Re: static calc
We make assumptions, and then can calculate things. You keep objecting that the assumption the province isn't changing rapidly is invalid. That's fine - give us an assumption (or sets of assumptions) you want calculations performed on. You want to say chain to 20% original size with 10% original size incoming? Chain executed in first hour, 12 hours till army home? Sure, that is an assumption we can make. Even better, it clearly represents a decent approximation of events that actually happen in the game - so we can learn something by assuming that.

Frankly, I consider the above rare - I've had something close to that only once ever. So I'll put a lot more weight on a static conclusion that the conclusion drawn from the above scenario. But I readily grant both have useful information.

What I feel I'm hearing instead though is a refusal to consider that detailed calculations can help at all. You can't possible claim your province is *always* under high speed growth or being chained. Sometimes it sits there waiting for war, or just trades some hits in max gain mode, or pumps sci. Functionally static is a common state for provinces, and it also is usually the easiest to do calculations on.


Trying to argue your side with "because I say so", and only ever attacking the other argument with "it is static" doesn't actually show anything. We end up with some hot air, and one situation where we know the "math" side is right. State *why* you think the static conclusion isn't true in the situations you think are most important. If need be, state a typical example of said situation. Then we all do math to see if your vaunted "say so" actually holds up in the real world.


Heck - I've made the best argument against static here! OPA is rising, and you'll want pure TGs at some point soon. So you've got the cost of converting against the gain of higher offense at oop. It only works at all because the cost of converting for a dwarf can be *really* low, due to the raze credits. I have a specific concern (rising OPA), and even an example of where we should re-run a static calc to see that it changes (60+ OPA). Notice how we even manage to draw good conclusions by just running 2 static scenarios - the change between them tells us what we want to happen between them as our province develops. Sure, an even better sim could say if the stables become worse before either the raze credits come in, or before the employment goes below top BE... but frankly, we don't need that level of detail yet. So we start with 2 fairly easy static snapshots, one at the start, one at the end, and see what we need from there.

[DHaran]

It's been discussed 1000 times over Ethan, so most vets don't feel like arguing about it anymore except to say "we're right" because generally they are. Maximizing provinces is a waste of time in most cases, such as running the Fort/TG combo to get the absolute best military in a static environment. Math says it is what you should do, playing the game says otherwise. The game is more than math, believe it or not. It's this same reason why the stuff you put out every age about power rankings and best NW races and whatever else is mostly just rubbish.

[octobrev]

The only thing we can be sure of is that everything is exactly what each person perceives it to be.

[TheRock]

Trying to argue your side with "because I say so", and only ever attacking the other argument with "it is static" doesn't actually show anything. We end up with some hot air, and one situation where we know the "math" side is right. State *why* you think the static conclusion isn't true in the situations you think are most important. If need be, state a typical example of said situation. Then we all do math to see if your vaunted "say so" actually holds up in the real world.

You're assuming that I'm arguing. I'm not. I'm just giving you the answer. You can agree with it, you can disagree with it, you can sit here and give examples...I don't really care. I've never seen the need to argue facts. TGs beat Stables.

I'm not someone who's going to waste my time walking you through the qualitative and quantitative reasons why TGs win. If people can't figure them out for themselves, that's fine. There are lots of players who are considered "very good" who couldn't prove it out for you, either. However, they know enough to listen to the people who have done the work and figured it out. I don't see any reason to waste the time doing all the calculations showing what you'll start at, what happens when you get hit and when you hit other people, how different draft sizes and BE impact the comparison and why OPNW is important.

Feel free to keep arguing, I don't really mind. I just wanted to make sure that the people who are reading this thread to get answers know the right one. If having this discussion and presenting your evidence will help you understand, that's great. If you want to complain that the steps to get to the right answer aren't being spoon-fed to you, that's fine too. I don't really care either way.

Good luck :)

[Twyla]

I think a lot of us are overlooking a few things:

A ) The main gist of this thread is to illustrate how the various elements of Utopia interact with one another - primarily for the benefit of those who have little/no prior experience with the game.

B ) What's outlined in the OP is meant to be a starting point - not the end-all of be-all.

C ) Age-to-Age changes, finesse in land management, Kingdom composition, and worlds of other dynamic forces within the game will - of course - change things along the way

D ) 40.5 OpA (with 3000 Zerks), 23 nominal DpA (Zerks out), and 48.5 DpA with Zerks home - on 620 acres - isn't exactly a shoddy place to be OOP. Not the 'Ultimate OOP Strat', but better than most of the builds I've seen out there.


Face it. No matter how you perceive TGs vs Stables or other issues, this is - at the very least - something you can work with. A novice comes into your Kingdom and follows the OP in their first few days, they're still far more an asset than a liability. Most of the changes your particular notion of 'ideal' might require, they can readily manage using the incoming lands from their first grab - or even just reshuffle the lands they have - without requiring much (if any) Aid.

We've all seen Provinces come OOP with full rainbow builds. We've all seen attacking Provinces come OOP with little or no offense. We've all seen loads of Land Cows coming OOP with huge Provinces but without anything close to resembling a respectable defense.

Whatever flaws the build in the OP may have, it assuredly doesn't share any of these liabilities.

Again, this was never intended to be 'The Perfect OOP Build' - such a thing simply doesn't exist. All I've ever claimed it to be is a strong starting point - could be stronger, but far closer to that than what most novices come up with.