Lets talk about what it takes now to field an army in Strat

[SPQR]

The problem with current gold levels is it basically squeezes out small clans entirely and encourages large clans to repeat Strat 1 tactics (stockpile gold like its going out of style, never attack).

Also, the whole "not fun" thing.

[Slamz]

Not sure I see the problem, at least not via this example.

Why assume armies are going to be 2500 in size?  OP basically proved that they are NOT going to be that large, especially if you want to use decent equipment.

Personally I'm looking forward to a lot of smaller battles.  I also have yet to see discussions regarding how much money we can expect to make through trading.  When we start seeing people transport hundreds of goods across the map to sell, we may have a better idea of the real income levels.  I think a major point of the recent changes was to make cross-map trading be the #1 income source.  It's also the riskiest.

[Matey]

one reason to use 2500 as the army size is because thats how many troops are in castles... and its 5k in towns. if people are rolling around with 100-1000 troops and never any more than that... then no one will take a castle or town. and if its way to expensive to equip and maintain a 2500 man army... then yeah you wont see one.

[Tydeus]

one reason to use 2500 as the army size is because thats how many troops are in castles... and its 5k in towns. if people are rolling around with 100-1000 troops and never any more than that... then no one will take a castle or town. and if its way to expensive to equip and maintain a 2500 man army... then yeah you wont see one.

Except when those numbers get changed.

"<chadz> castle/town pop/gold is work in progress"

From about 2 minutes ago.

[Beans]

Not sure I see the problem, at least not via this example.

Why assume armies are going to be 2500 in size?  OP basically proved that they are NOT going to be that large, especially if you want to use decent equipment.

Personally I'm looking forward to a lot of smaller battles.  I also have yet to see discussions regarding how much money we can expect to make through trading.  When we start seeing people transport hundreds of goods across the map to sell, we may have a better idea of the real income levels.  I think a major point of the recent changes was to make cross-map trading be the #1 income source.  It's also the riskiest.

Cross map trading is really an awesome idea and is probably what I am most excited about(really helps small clans, or even single players can raid). However, actually moving across the map is a real pain. We really need waypoints to make long route trading less menial.

Except when those numbers get changed.

"<chadz> castle/town pop/gold is work in progress"

From about 2 minutes ago.

That is good news. However, it still requires much more time to equip troops on a 1:1 scale than it did in strat version two. It didn't take a month to equip 2500.

[SPQR]

Ok, lets do the math for 500 troops. (I'm going to assume in the following #'s that troop upkeep and gold from crpg cancel out or are negligible)

Time to recruit 500 troops @ 100% recruitment rate: 500 manhours
Cost to recruit 500 troops @ 5 gold per hour: 2,500 gold

Equipment for 500 troops:
500 * 107.16(Studded Leather Coat) = 53,580
500 * 31.76(Nasal Helmet)                 = 15,880
500 * 11.56(Leather Gloves)              = 5,780
500 * 6.12(Sarranid Leather Boots)   = 3,060
150 * 26.16(Falchion)                          = 3,924
400 * 30.04(Old Heater Shield)           = 12,016
100 * 30.16(Two Handed Axe)            = 3,016
150 * 5.08(Pitch Fork)                        = 762
150 * 34.84(Short Bow)                     = 5,226
450 * 6.44(Arrows)                          = 2,829

Total cost for equipment: 106,073
Estimated gold per hour via trading: 12/hr (based on averages I've calculated)

Total cost for troops and equipment: 108,573
Time to raise 108,573 @ 12/hr: 9048 manhours
Total manhours: 9548 manhours

--
Time per member - 50 man clan: 191 hours
Time per member - 25 man clan: 382 hours
Time per member - 10 man clan: 905 hours

So at this rate a 50 man clan will need 8 days to raise and equip a 500 man army, assuming all members are active and working at 100% efficiency (ie just pumping out trade goods and recruiting, no traveling or anything else).
A 25 man clan will need 16 days.
And a 10 man clan will need 38 days.

--
The underlying problem is it takes 18x longer to equip a soldier than it is to recruit him.

[Matey]

clearly we are all doing this wrong.
lets try it again

500 shirts (at 0 gold each) 0-20 gold?
500 wrapping boots (0 each) 0-20 gold?
500 scythes (25 each) 12,500 gold

12,500 - 12540 gold per 500 troops.

[Slamz]

Coming from someone who enjoyed single player, 500 troops is "a lot".

I think the goal may be to get Strategus to feel more like single player.  A newer player will have around 35 troops, poorly equipped.  The average player "lord" will have around 50 troops with him, modestly equipped.  Well-to-do veteran players with a couple months of Strategus under their belt will have around 100 troops, well equipped, but this will be rare and hard to maintain.

The average 20 vs 20 clan bash will end up with around 1000 troops on both sides, with fairly modest equipment.


Of course, we are still off by a fair margin to meet this goal.  Troop equipment costs will definitely have to be reduced.

Figure:
Brand new player (which all of us are at this point in Strategus)
35 troops
Leather Warrior Cap 10x35 = 350 gold
Leather Vest 5.8x35 = 203 gold
Hide Boots 2.8x35 = 98 gold
Leather Covered Round Shield 28.8x35 = 1008 gold
Hand Axe 40.4x35 = 1414 gold

Total cost: 3073 gold

This is, to me, the bottom line starter price for a really simple army that a newer player could use to start caravaning goods around.

That's going to take a fair amount of playing to raise that kind of cash and it's so valuable, you'd hardly want to risk it on a caravan!


I think we may be off by as much as a factor of 10.

For 307 gold, this basic army might be worth the risk of running a caravan.




Maybe a good rule of measure would be to ask:

"How many successful caravan runs do I need to pay the cost of the army used to escort it?"

I would think you should be able to pay for an army like the one I listed in 1 successful run, from, say, Sargoth to Suno.  If you make it BACK from Suno to Sargoth then you've paid for your army twice (and can now afford some upgrades, or a bigger army).

A better army of chainmail and midline weapons will of course require more than one successful trade route run.

[Tydeus]

Total cost for equipment: 106,073
Estimated gold per hour via trading: 12/hr (based on averages I've calculated)

Total cost for troops and equipment: 108,573
Time to raise 108,573 @ 12/hr: 9048 manhours
Total manhours: 9548 manhours

--
Time per member - 50 man clan: 191 hours
Time per member - 25 man clan: 382 hours
Time per member - 10 man clan: 905 hours

So at this rate a 50 man clan will need 8 days to raise and equip a 500 man army, assuming all members are active and working at 100% efficiency (ie just pumping out trade goods and recruiting, no traveling or anything else).
A 25 man clan will need 16 days.
And a 10 man clan will need 38 days.

--
The underlying problem is it takes 18x longer to equip a soldier than it is to recruit him.

First, how are you getting such a shitty average of 12g/hr. I'm just going to assume that's straight profit, but that seems absolutely ridiculous, especially if you have a clan of 30+ players coordinating. Second, the extremely low ball "12[gold]/hr" causes you to have an obscure amount of manhours. This in turn throws off your "18x longer to equip a soldier than it is to recruit him" estimate.

I can see 12g/hr maybe, if you're talking about each crafter also serving as his own trade caravan.

I could have made over 12g/hr by myself if I chose to sell my reindeer meat at a castle 1 location away from where I crafted it.

[SPQR]

12/hr is the profit margin.

I used the follow calculations -

Selling trade goods to sell them in the village you gathered them in:

Cost to gather : 8 gold
Visiting fee: 5 gold
Sale price: 16 gold
Profit: 3 gold/hr

--

Selling trade goods in adjacent village:
Cost to gather: 8 gold
Visiting fee: 5 gold
Sale price: 18 gold
Profit: 5 gold/hr

(Assuming you can get there and back in an hour)

And I kept calculating at higher and higher distance bonus and dividing by the time needed to perform the action, moving the full distance for the 450% bonus still only netted 20 gold/hr due to the absolutely horrible movement speeds.

Of course as soon as I wrote this the visitor fees have changed to 1/hr so this is no longer valid.

[Tydeus]

12/hr is the profit margin.

I used the follow calculations -

Selling trade goods to sell them in the village you gathered them in:

Cost to gather : 8 gold
Visiting fee: 5 gold
Sale price: 16 gold
Profit: 3 gold/hr

--

Selling trade goods in adjacent village:
Cost to gather: 8 gold
Visiting fee: 5 gold
Sale price: 18 gold
Profit: 5 gold/hr

(Assuming you can get there and back in an hour)

And I kept calculating at higher and higher distance bonus and dividing by the time needed to perform the action, moving the full distance for the 450% bonus still only netted 20 gold/hr due to the absolutely horrible movement speeds.

Of course as soon as I wrote this the visitor fees have changed to 1/hr so this is no longer valid.

Yeah, the issue is that you're selling at the wrong places/times. Selling at a fief that doesn't have +3 or higher prosperity is pointless, especially if you have a ton of trade goods.

For me it was like this:
Cost to gather: 6 gold
Visiting fee: 5(now 1) gold
Sale price: 12 gold
Profit: 1/5 gold/hr

But when I traveled to the closest castle that was at +3 prosperity, it looked like this:
Cost to gather: 12 gold
Visiting fee: 1 gold
Sale Price: 24 gold (with only a 4% distance bonus)
profit:13/17 gold/hr(not counting the 1 1/2 hour travel time).

You're just completely going about trading the wrong way by disregarding fief prosperity.

[PhantomZero]

You're just completely going about trading the wrong way by disregarding fief prosperity.

Yeah, disregarding the completely random thing that adjusts the buy/sell price of goods.

I too base my income on luck. ("I'm a professional slots player.")

By selling at a place with +3 prosperity you are actually wasting your money, because that means soon the price will increase by +3. Hold onto your goods and wait.

[SPQR]

Yeah, the issue is that you're selling at the wrong places/times. Selling at a fief that doesn't have +3 or higher prosperity is pointless, especially if you have a ton of trade goods.

For me it was like this:
Cost to gather: 6 gold
Visiting fee: 5(now 1) gold
Sale price: 12 gold
Profit: 1/5 gold/hr

But when I traveled to the closest castle that was at +3 prosperity, it looked like this:
Cost to gather: 12 gold
Visiting fee: 1 gold
Sale Price: 24 gold (with only a 4% distance bonus)
profit:13/17 gold/hr(not counting the 1 1/2 hour travel time).

You're just completely going about trading the wrong way by disregarding fief prosperity.

You can't just discount the travel time when determining the rate per hour, because that defeats the entire purpose of figuring out the gold/hour.

The travel time HAS to be included in calculations because it has an opportunity cost. Any time you are traveling you cannot do anything else to gain money/recruits ect.

So in your example, the expenses are 13 gold, and the income is 24, for a profit of 11 gold. However, there is also the hour lost to gather the resource and the hour and a half travel time. So the income rate is 11 gold /2.5 hours = 4.4 gold an hour.

Remember now that you used to be able to work for 40 gold an hour in cities, AND gain gold via cRPG play, AND equipment was 1/4 the cost, AND upkeep has been raised. Its a quadruple nerf to equipment and gold gain.

[LLJK_Siggy]

This is still incorrect. You are assuming that he is working for 1 hour, then moving and selling. Lets suppose he moved and sold his goods every 24 hours instead.

His costs are 11 gold(not 13). 6 gold to gather, 5 gold for the visiting fee.

His time spent is 27 hours. 24 hours crafting goods, 3 hours travelling(1.5 hours one way). He recieves 24 goods in his 24 hours of crafting

hourlyProfit = (numberOfGoods*profitPerGood)/timeSpent.

(24*13)/27 = 11.5 gold/hour

If he crafted even longer, his gold/hour would go up, although only slightly. Also now that visiting fees are only 1 gold he is making an additional 4 per item, which turns out to be 15 gold per hour. Still not great but a lot better than 4.4

[SPQR]

Oh whoops, I used the numbers for the wrong fief, and yeah, that was calculated for 1 good.

At any rate, what you've just proved is that my original 12 gold/hr calculation is pretty close. Less if you are selling locally/trading frequently, more if you are trading far away/ less frequently.

Assuming the majority of clans will be selling their goods in patches of 25-50 within their general vicinity you can see that the profit margins are not all that impressive.