Architect: wood / second [Excel]

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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EDIT: i made some mistakes ^^ → the table on top is not good, there is a new one in the comments

I wondered, how much the discount by building smth with the architect is … so i made a little excel … now you dont have to do it yourself ^^
(keep in mind: i made it in the middle of the night and i’m not great at maths - so no guarantee! :wink: )

architect
architect1811×631 214 KB

The higher gatherrate for coins is not included (because it only affects 2 buildings) … so the discount on them is actually a little lower. Also the basilica gives additional buildtime decrease, which i didnt include here either. The architect upgrade card is an Age III shipment (!), so by that time you should be at 0,8 w/s gatherrate. Gatherrate of villagers = gatherrate of architects.

Some standard buildings are coloured for orientation. The little flags indicate the ‘bad’ discounts.

architects have some pros and cons, that are hard to meassure:
cons:
longer construction time → not good for frontlines/defence
longer construction time → you benefit later from the building (-> 2 less villagers from TC)
can only gather from trees (no big deal^^)
pros:
you can start construction before having the necessary resources → press ‘pay foundation’ later
more flexibility (-> different military buildings)/ easier transition to farms etc.
you save a lot of wood lategame, when there are no trees left → so architects have way more value, than my excel sheet says

overall archtects are great, but is the homecity card worth it? Idk. What do you think?

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…well already found a mistake :sweat_smile: architects are 2 pop if i remember correctly, so i have to compare them to 2 villagers… I’ll update the excel tomorrow

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Since architects build structures for free, I think the more you have, the more profitable they are. Building a house in 60 seconds is not the same as building 3 in the same time.

For a treaty, yes, but for a normal game, I don’t know.

PS: I didn’t know architects build walls so fast, thanks for the info. :smile:

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I believe that the main advantage of the architect is that is a way to have buildings for free over time, or with a discount, although personally I never train more than 1.

It’s also good for emergency buildings, if you have the wood, since you can build an outpost really fast if you are under attack.

It’s overall a very flexible unit…

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ok … here is the update as promised …
I switched to another method, because its easier to understand and more practical ingame.

The table now shows, how much the architect working is worth in wood/second. That way you can see, how much benefit you get out of it (and if you should send the architect chopping wood instead). It also shows, whats better: 1 architect or 2 villagers?

wood trickle
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funfact:

2 villagers constructing need 0,8 of the buildtime 1 villager would need (diminishing returns → not ideal to use multiple villagers)
2 architects constructing need 0,5 of the buildtime 1 architect would need (no diminishing returns → ok/good to build with mutiple architects)

example: lombard
1 vill. → 20sec
2 vill. → 16 sec
1 arch. → 120sec
2 arch. → 60sec

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