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I might call it "A game of pixel mens stabbing other pixel mens in as cost-over-time efficient a manner as possible". I definitely would call it "amazingly fun". Thanks for the economic analysis, it's interesting and educational.
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Aug 17, 2013 12:33
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Fat Samurai posted:And due diligence was done, indeed. Don't take my words as a complain, I was just impressed with the analysis that went into this. I usually take almost the full time limit to finish a game, so money isn't so important because it tends to accumulate. Don't worry, I wasn't implying that you were complaining, simply that others have taken issue with my analysis of things in the past (read: previous LP). Bonus Economic Update 2 - Farming in Shogun 2 Farms are very complicated in Shogun 2, as the fact that food affects all the provinces in your empire makes running accurate models fairly difficult. As such, we have several use cases to more accurately represent the experience of any given player in a normal game of Shogun 2. This post is meant to be read after reading the earlier economic primer post, as that post outlines where all this information comes from. The values are: Local Tax Rate : 25% Empire Tax Rate : 25% (With Tax Reform and a moderate sized empire, it works out in this area. If anything, it's a little generous) Growth Modifier from Tax: 70% There are three speeds at which players tend to approach Shogun 2. As the growth provided by farms are modified by your empire size, it will depend on when you build them as to how much growth you get on any given turn and therefore how much koku you earn. In order to make this information useful to players at all stages of the game, a turn offset has been applied to each graph to show you how the stage of your game impacts the returns from any given building (If you want to see how good an Improved Irrigation would be if you built it on turn 25-35 or so, you would look at the Starting Turn 30 graph). Experienced players tend towards the FAST style, gaining roughly a province every 2.5 turns, finishing up on turn 60. Areas which are shaded indicate turn counts which you would not be able to reach as you would have won the game (or lost the game in the case of slow players) by then. Each graph is taken on it's own scale (60 turns long, 90 turns long, 120 turns long) and so must only be compared with others of the same magnitude, as curves will appear steeper on the longer graphs even if they are in fact identical (Compare FAST with FAST, MEDIUM with MEDIUM etc). There is only one option for farms with a starting turn of 0, as all the other farms are unlocked with arts, 11 turns worth for Terrace Farming and 33 turns worth for Land Consolidation, so these will only appear past the Starting turn of 15 and 30 respectively. FAST GAME A game won in 60 turns at an average pace of 2.5 turns per province.  As we can see here, Improved Irrigation is a good investment, with the Very Fertile provinces returning 100% profit 18 turns in and even Barren Provinces providing 100% profit 34 turns in. With no other farms to compare it to, we need to compare it to the return on other buildings like Markets and Sake Dens. This will be covered later in economic update series.   It gets more interesting here, as we can see that Terrace Farming is outperformed on all levels by Improved Irrigation, with even Barren Improved Irrigation earning 100% profit at 30 turns in, compared to the 100% profit of Very Fertile Terrace Farming at 37 turns. Somewhat counter-intuitively, we are always better to upgrade all our provinces to Improved Irrigation before we consider Terrace Farming. Having said that, Terrace Farming of Barren and Meagre provinces don't make 100% profit before the game end, with Average just squeaking in.    While halfway through on FAST, we see that Improved Irrigation is still a solid investment with provinces of all fertilities providing healthy profits. Terrace Farming is, however, a different beast entirely.While Very Fertile Terrace Farms post a reasonable profit before endgame, Fertile barely squeaks into the positive and Barren, Meagre and Average are complete wastes of koku.    This late in the game we are not expecting growth based strategies to pay off (or much economic investment really) and this is backed up by the fact that only our best case scenario, Very Fertile Improved Irrigation posts a noticeable profit before the game end. Neither Terrace Farming or Land Consolidation posts a profit and is really just throwing koku away. As we can see, Improved Irrigation for fast (usually skilled) players is almost always worth building everywhere, while Terrace Farming is really limited to only your richer provinces before midgame and not worthwhile after the halfway mark. At no point is it ever worth building Land Consolidation. MEDIUM GAME A game won in 90 turns at an average pace of 3.75 turns per province. Our starting turn offsets are now turn 0, 23, 45 and 67. As such, Land Consolidation will have a Turn 23 offset graph despite only being available 33 turns in and will instead have a larger shaded area to demonstrate that it's not possible to achieve the results shown at the extremes due to the arts limitation.  Improved Irrigation continues to be exceptionally good value, although we can see the lower fertility provinces take longer to pay off relative to the FAST TPP (around 10%) so that despite the fact that you have more turns, your rate of return is slower than it would be if your expansion pace was faster. Regardless, we can see that Improved Irrigation is always a great investment for even Barren Provinces (although the ~23 turn lag before you get your original investment back certainly has to be considered).    Similar to the FAST TPP, even the worst Improved Irrigation is better than the best Terrace Farming, while the worst Terrace Farming is better than the best Land Consolidation. In fact, Land Consolidation has such poor returns even at Very Fertile that it's very questionable that you would have no other better investment options.    At the halfway point, we can see that Improved Irrigation is still a strong performer, beating Terrace Farming comparing worst to best. Barren and Meagre Terrace Farming are questionable, as over the entire course of the game you only earn 100% profit, with 3/4 of the time you have left in the game spent with that upgrade choice as cash negative. Land Consolidation is hilariously laughable, with only Very Fertile barely managing to sneak over the line into giving you your money back.    At the 3/4 mark, we can see that even Improved Irrigation is getting to the point where your returns are acceptable, with the exception of the always amazing Very Fertile provinces. Fertile is useful, but likely to be giving you money too late to really make use of it. Only Very Fertile Terrace Farming manages to eke out a profit and is a total waste of time. Land Consolidation is... performing like usual (terribly). SLOW GAME A game won in 120 turns at an average pace of 5 turns per province. This is the turn limit of Shogun 2 and going any slower will cause you to lose. This means this is the absolute best case for any growth heavy strategies (farms). Our starting turn offsets are not turns 0, 30, 60 and 90. Land Consolidation on the turn 30 offset and Terrace Farming on the 0 turn offset will both have expanded shaded areas to represent their minimum research requirements. Disregard the error that states it's MEDIUM TPP, it's actually SLOW TPP   Improved Irrigation continues to be one of the best investments in the entire game, regardless of fertility. In this situation, even Terrace Farming is a good idea, providing somewhere between 7 and 9 times it's initial cost in profit by the end of the game depending on fertility. The risk you take with Terrace Farming here is that the wealth gain is hugely back loaded to the point that if you finish in 100 turns instead of 120 you lose around 4 times your initial expense (meaning it only earns 3 to 6 times its value). Nevertheless, if you are a newer player who needs every koku in the endgame it can be worth considering, although you will be behind on koku until ~30 turns after you invest.    Starting from 30 turns in, Improved Irrigation still knocks it out of the park, where your return on investment is so good that it doesn't matter that you lose a lot of koku on the back end, as you are still absolutely raking it in. Terrace Farming starts to be a lot less attractive here, however, as we suffer the same problem as noted before (only 3 to 6 times it's value) but that requires you to go to the absolute end of the game. Finishing even 20 turns earlier (So at 100 turns) guts the number of turns you are operating at a profit, especially considering the 30-40 turn lag time before you even get your initial investment back. Land Consolidation is still hilariously terrible, taking a hilarious 50 turns to break even (remember this is absolute best case for growth scenarios) and only Very Fertile managing to just pip the 300% profit mark. This assumes that all you do is directly rush to Land Consolidation through your arts and then immediately build one, a situation that is pretty unlikely. It's far more likely that you will want to spend at least 10 turns picking up other key arts and just by doing that Land Consolidation will barely crack 100% profit on anything less than Very Fertile by the very end of the game.    Improved Irrigation is our strongest economic performer and is absolutely worth building at this point. Terrace Farming has, however, dropped out of the race of usefulness, as while it does eventually manage a reasonable return, being behind for 30-40 turns before we see positive returns is just not something that I can strongly recommend. Other investments are far more likely to bring strong returns and around this time you will be in or approaching Realm Divide, right when the cash is more useful to you. Land Consolidation... yeah. Don't do it.    This late in the game even Improved Irrigation is pretty dicey, with only Very Fertile giving returns that are going to be useful in the context of your final push to win. Nothing else should be considered. It's interesting how with all of our modelling, our results speak for themselves and provide simple answers to complicated questions. From all our farming data, we can see some easy and obvious trends that line up with common wisdom regarding farms and food in Shogun 2. Improved Irrigation should always be built first, going from the most Fertile province all the way down to the Barren provinces before considering any other farm upgrades. Terrace Farming is a strong contender for early Very Fertile or Fertile provinces, but after midgame (read: Realm Divide) is not worth the investment given the lag time before you can realise a profit. Land Consolidation... not even once. I hope you enjoyed this economic update on farms in Shogun 2! Next Time: Non-farming economic buildings in Shogun 2
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Aug 17, 2013 15:32
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It's kinda funny how Yari Ashigaru are pretty much the best melee unit buy in the game, and for all the claims of rebalancing, every mod i've played just ends up making them an even better buy(usually because they stick around longer and have more men). They have weaknesses, but in campaign the AI will almost never build an army that heavily exploits their weaknesses. I mean you don't necessarily want to use them exclusively as your melee infantry(though you could win a campaign that way), but the general power of this unit and the morale buffs available(Stand and Fight/Inspire/auras/vet) just make units like Yari Samurai feel obsolete.
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Aug 17, 2013 19:30
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They have the same sort of weaknesses that other spear formations have got in games. They're relatively immobile, and even cavalry smashing them from behind can wipe them pretty easily, and the lack of armour makes them easy arrow fodder. Ultimately, they are a great buy, especially for their cost, but even against the AI, I've been finding I need to work real hard to keep them from losing a flank or to avoid the AI getting around my rear, especially as I have small armies.
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Aug 18, 2013 04:34
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Shalcar your math is based off the short game. (take 25 provinces) What about for a long game?
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Aug 18, 2013 04:47
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AtomikKrab posted:Shalcar your math is based off the short game. (take 25 provinces) What about for a long game? Isn't that also (take 25 provinces), you just have twice the time to do it? I don't know myself, don't have the game.
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Aug 18, 2013 08:04
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Teledahn posted:Isn't that also (take 25 provinces), you just have twice the time to do it? Take 40 provinces and you have about twice the time yes, then domination which is 60 provinces in the same time as long ie: SLOG
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Aug 18, 2013 09:07
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Yukitsu posted:They have the same sort of weaknesses that other spear formations have got in games. They're relatively immobile, and even cavalry smashing them from behind can wipe them pretty easily, and the lack of armour makes them easy arrow fodder. Ultimately, they are a great buy, especially for their cost, but even against the AI, I've been finding I need to work real hard to keep them from losing a flank or to avoid the AI getting around my rear, especially as I have small armies. If you keep them in spearwall yeah they don't move very well, but with good micro you can pretty much keep them from getting hit in the back. AI cavalry attacks are super predictable. It's just, the level of buffs allowed for units in this game, be it from special provinces and other modifiers really makes the unit super-strong. They're almost useless in sieges where they will inevitably get morale shocked to hell but in most cases you can always respond to any morale crisis. You do kinda need other units if you're playing out sieges and/or playing on legendary where you need to exploit the AI further(usually with cavalry).
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Aug 18, 2013 17:17
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Is the greater food supply ever a consideration? Like, you'd need Land Consolidation so as not to starve the castle garrison or whatever?
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Aug 19, 2013 11:00
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Glazius posted:Is the greater food supply ever a consideration? Like, you'd need Land Consolidation so as not to starve the castle garrison or whatever? From a practical point of view, yes. If you need the food, Land Consolidation is a way of turning koku into food to prevent starvation. It's not really an economic boost except in extreme circumstances, but if your option is food riots or Land Consolidation, then Land Consolidation is one extra lever you can pull to prevent catastrophe. The economic posts are meant to be taken in an economic sense, rather than a direct game one, that is, the benefit a building provides may be absolutely critical to your current situation, but detrimental to those outside it. 4000 koku to avoid economic collapse is a bargain, but if you are no risk of it then it's wasted koku. From a less immediate point of view, the province that starves will be randomly selected from the provinces which have the biggest negative local food supply (ie. Your biggest importers of food). In that sense, Land Consolidation can prevent a certain province from being affected by making it no longer your biggest negative local food supply. I'm not sure that situation would ever really be worth consideration though, as I can't think of where that would ever really be useful (since if you have that sort of money to throw around, why don't you upgrade another provinces farm?).
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Aug 19, 2013 11:21
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The thing is though, land consolidation brings a large opportunity cost, in terms of time spent researching the art, if nothing else. If your problem is not having enough food, starting to research land consolidation and then doing the upgrades afterwards is already way too slow. You are much better off either conquering some new food positive province, or pulling down a market or so. You shouldn't really plan your province development around needing land consolidation, anyway. You don't need that many fully upgraded provinces, and it's unlikely you can afford that many. Fangz fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Aug 19, 2013 |
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Aug 19, 2013 11:35
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My god so many graphs. When did this game become math?
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Aug 19, 2013 12:37
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cokerpilot posted:My god so many graphs. When did this game become math? All games are math! It just depends how much they hide it from you. 
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Aug 19, 2013 13:11
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cokerpilot posted:My god so many graphs. When did this game become math? Don't worry, maths is over for the next few weeks. We now return you to your regularly scheduled posting.
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Aug 19, 2013 13:42
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Jsor posted:All games are math! It just depends how much they hide it from you. Masanari did a thing.  I regret nothing 
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Aug 19, 2013 13:42
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Yeah, imagine what Sun Tzu could have done with Microsoft Excel...
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Aug 19, 2013 14:21
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Fangz posted:Yeah, imagine what Sun Tzu could have done with Microsoft Excel... Ah, yes, Sun Tzu's timeless classic: The Art of Middle Management.
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Aug 19, 2013 15:47
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Fangz posted:Yeah, imagine what Sun Tzu could have done with Microsoft Excel... "Know your formulas, and know your charts, and you will create a hundred spreadsheets."
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Aug 19, 2013 15:54
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Fangz posted:Yeah, imagine what Sun Tzu could have done with Microsoft Excel... It's better for people like Tacitus (I don't know any famous Chinese tactician). Grand strategy unfortunately doesn't benefit as much from maths as tactics do, other than logistics which you can do with a block of wood and an inky horse bit.
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Aug 19, 2013 21:53
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"Know the proper positioning and arrangement of your data, and the graphs will start working right, I promise"
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Aug 20, 2013 01:02
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Steam's doing a Total War sale, you can pick up the Master Collection (Rome, Medieval 2, Empire, Napoleon, Shogun 2, Shogun 2 FotS) for $22.49 (US price), or individual games for 50-75% off.
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Aug 21, 2013 01:42
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Yukitsu posted:Grand strategy unfortunately doesn't benefit as much from maths as tactics do, other than logistics which you can do with a block of wood and an inky horse bit. You can, but logistics would gain ridiculously from not needing an entire room full of dudes with abacuses to handle the calculations for your 4th quarter spending projections.
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Aug 21, 2013 02:20
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Yukitsu posted:It's better for people like Tacitus (I don't know any famous Chinese tactician). Grand strategy unfortunately doesn't benefit as much from maths as tactics do, other than logistics which you can do with a block of wood and an inky horse bit.  Tacitus was not a tactician, but a historian. He trashed the Caesars, was known for his dry wit, and codified the stereotypes that would be used to describe Germans and other "noble savage" types for the next two thousand years!
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Aug 21, 2013 02:33
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Smiling Knight posted:
I keep mixing him up with Aelianus Tacticus for no justifiable reason.
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Aug 21, 2013 08:32
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Yukitsu posted:I keep mixing him up with Aelianus Tacticus for no justifiable reason. Eh, what's a T more or less between friends, right Yukisu? Sincerely, Ax Refund  ... Seriously, though -- though I haven't made that mistake myself, it's an easy one to make. It's kind of weird how Tacitus and Tacticus both became famous enough to be remembered today. One of those odd coincidences of history, I guess. I like to imagine historians a few hundred years from now having to remind themselves that Admiral Nelson was not the guy who invented that system of radio and T.V. audience ratings in the 20th century, but that other English-speaking dude who was a famous military commander.
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Aug 21, 2013 13:36
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Or that the George Bush guy who invaded Iraq was not the same guy as the George Bush who invaded Iraq... I generally like to take my time and develop my core lands as much as possible, so it is a bit weird from a design point of view that only the first two upgrades are ever worth it, with the second upgrade in many cases being a net loss as well. Why not cut the last upgrade entirely? It feels WRONG not to upgrade as much as possible 
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Aug 21, 2013 13:55
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I don't mind a little derail guys, but I think that conversation has run it's course.Torrannor posted:I generally like to take my time and develop my core lands as much as possible, so it is a bit weird from a design point of view that only the first two upgrades are ever worth it, with the second upgrade in many cases being a net loss as well. Why not cut the last upgrade entirely? It feels WRONG not to upgrade as much as possible The last upgrade exists because the purpose of farms is not purely economic. Additional food lets you build bigger castles which not only increases the military power of that province, but allows you to construct an extra building chain there. As such, Land Consolidation exists because it lets you put extra into less space than you otherwise would, for a price. In that respect, it serves it's purpose admirably. Shogun 2 is balanced around rewarding the midpoint, so the "best" way to play (in the sense of getting the most bang for your koku) is to take other provinces instead of turtling up and maxing out development. Since arguably the best parts of Total War are the big battles, incentives for the players who seek those out is an understandable design goal. I do still prefer the balancing of Rise of the Samurai, but Shogun 2 vanilla has it's own charm.
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Aug 21, 2013 14:38
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shalcar posted:Shogun 2 is balanced around rewarding the midpoint, so the "best" way to play (in the sense of getting the most bang for your koku) is to take other provinces instead of turtling up and maxing out development. To expand on this a bit, in 99 games out of a 100 you're never going to be building Citadels or Imperial Roads or Legendary Sword schools. The reason for this is because the opportunity cost of all the prerequisite research can be down right crippling, and the actual koku cost of building them is quite high. Shogun 2 generally rewards researching wide, not researching deep. The only reason you're going to go down the tree at the expense of other arts is if you have a solid long term game plan (ie: "I am Shimazu, so I'm going to get Rail Guns and break the game." ) This quirk of the research also in turn ripples out to affect the rest of the game. You generally have lots of provinces upgraded to a midpoint, rather than a few provinces fully upgraded. You generally have large armies of average units instead of small armies containing multiple heroes. And so on. It's just kind of the way most Shogun games naturally pan out unless you set out from the start to turtle and get some deep down the tree art.
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Aug 21, 2013 19:15
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Sydin posted:To expand on this a bit, in 99 games out of a 100 you're never going to be building Citadels or Imperial Roads or Legendary Sword schools. The reason for this is because the opportunity cost of all the prerequisite research can be down right crippling, and the actual koku cost of building them is quite high. Shogun 2 generally rewards researching wide, not researching deep. The only reason you're going to go down the tree at the expense of other arts is if you have a solid long term game plan (ie: "I am Shimazu, so I'm going to get Rail Guns and break the game." Do tell about this railgun, I am a noob at games.
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Aug 21, 2013 19:25
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AtomikKrab posted:Do tell about this railgun, I am a noob at games. The heavy matchlocks that are unique to the shimazu. They have much better armour penetration than standard matchlocks and can penetrate units, I think to a max of 5 troops per bullet or something similar, they keep patching that. A pair of units will pretty much obliterate any AI charge, and if you're playing against them, they can easily catch you off guard.
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Aug 21, 2013 21:06
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Yeah, and combined with the absolutely insane melee infantry the Shimazu can get, well, let's just say there's a reason the Shimazu are considered an easy win.
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Aug 21, 2013 21:32
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The railguns used to have infinite penetration, and no drop. Shooting at charging infantry could travel through an entire army and kill a general standing far back. A couple of volleys would obliterate an entire army, no matter how many units you had. Right now they are capped at 3 units as far as i know.
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Aug 21, 2013 22:34
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The animation for when they hit a unit is also not the standard "got hit by a bullet" animation, but rather the animation for getting hit by artillery. When your heavy gunners fire into a mass of units, the first 2-3 ranks will literally be blown backwards into the advancing troops behind. I can't begin to describe how satisfying it is to watch. 
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Aug 21, 2013 23:00
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So how satisfying is it to watch?
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Aug 22, 2013 02:14
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Sydin posted:To expand on this a bit, in 99 games out of a 100 you're never going to be building Citadels or Imperial Roads or Legendary Sword schools. The reason for this is because the opportunity cost of all the prerequisite research can be down right crippling, and the actual koku cost of building them is quite high. Shogun 2 generally rewards researching wide, not researching deep. The only reason you're going to go down the tree at the expense of other arts is if you have a solid long term game plan (ie: "I am Shimazu, so I'm going to get Rail Guns and break the game." I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. I think the reason you don't see many players going deep is that deep is an active choice, while wide is a passive one. Especially with newer players who can't assess the strengths of any given deep branch and so go for the flexibility and short term payoffs of wide. Deep swords is rubbish for example, while deep spears is amazing despite the fact that on first glance they look on par (Shogun 2 tree balance ).I dont think wide is rewarded more than deep, but it requires a special approach for each deep path that newer players simply won't grasp. For what it's worth, we are going wide to show off as many units as possible while still going deep enough to show off some fancy toys.
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Aug 22, 2013 06:12
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Sydin posted:The animation for when they hit a unit is also not the standard "got hit by a bullet" animation, but rather the animation for getting hit by artillery. When your heavy gunners fire into a mass of units, the first 2-3 ranks will literally be blown backwards into the advancing troops behind. I can't begin to describe how satisfying it is to watch. Oh goodness, this simply must be demonstrated! It sounds absolutely marvellous.
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Aug 22, 2013 06:13
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shalcar posted:I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. That's probably a better way of putting it, 'rewards' wasn't a good choice of words. What I was trying to get at was that the opportunity cost of going deep into the tree generally doesn't outweigh the arts you could have gotten instead by spreading out, unless you're turtling and playing a 120+ turn game. Teledahn posted:Oh goodness, this simply must be demonstrated! It sounds absolutely marvellous. Slamu posted:So how satisfying is it to watch? For your viewing pleasure: Shimazu Heavy Gunners
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Aug 22, 2013 10:48
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Sydin posted:For your viewing pleasure: Jesus. When I get home tonight, I'm starting a Shimazu game. I always avoided them before because I thought that their proximity to the majority of the trade routes and how relatively easy it was to convert them to Christianity and get the gunboats to take and defend those routes made them boring. But I have to try those guns.
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Aug 22, 2013 14:11
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shalcar posted:I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. As a new player, the deep swords and spears do indeed look the same to me. What's the big difference?
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Aug 22, 2013 15:11
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BurningStone posted:As a new player, the deep swords and spears do indeed look the same to me. What's the big difference? I'd like to know this too. Aside from naginatas just being awesome at defense, what makes deep swords crap but deep spears good? (or is that it?) And HOLY gently caress those railguns! Guess i'm gonna play shimazu next.
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Aug 22, 2013 16:56
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