Now that Dutch have been given a unique type of villager, I think there is a good opportunity for a little buff and flavor change for the civilization. Change the Dutch villager gather rate of coin from a 15% modifier buff, to a 15% base increase. This change will make upgrades to coin gathering on villagers more valuable for Dutch, keeping in flavor with the civilization.
If you are confused by the details, here is an explainer.
Currently:
- This info in coming from Gathering Rates - The ESOC wiki for Age of Empires 3 and Merchant (Age of Empires III) | Age of Empires Series Wiki | Fandom which is up to date as far as I know.
- Normal settlers base gather at a rate of 0.6 coin per second (on coin mines).
- Dutch settlers currently have a base gather at a rate of 0.6 coin per second (on coin mines).
- Dutch settlers also have a buff that applies a 15% bonus to their coin gather rate on mines.
- Thus Dutch settlers have a gather rate of 0.69 (0.6 x 1.15 = 0.69).
Proposed Change:
- Instead of having a buff to their gather rate, change their base gather rate.
- Base coin gather rate becomes 0.69 instead of 0.69 = 0.6 x 1.15
- Dutch gather rate on mines initially will be completely unaffected.
- However each upgrade on villager coin mine gathering rates will be more effective.
Explanation of How the Change Makes Upgrades More Effective:
- Essentially by increasing the base gather rate of coin mines of Dutch villagers by 15% (rather than applying a 15% buff to their gather rate, as I explain above), every upgrade applied to their gather rate will be 15% more effect for Dutch villagers.
Placer Mines Example:
- Placer Mines upgrades coin mine gather rate by 10%
- All gathering upgrades are additive to the base rate (not multiplicative, as far as I know)
- Current Dutch villagers: 0.6 x (1 + 0.15 + 0.10) = 0.75
- Changed Dutch villagers: 0.69 x (1 + 0.10) = 0.759
- Results in an increase in gather rate of 0.009 (exactly a 1.5% bonus to base rate)
Thus, making the upgrade essentially an 11.5% upgrade for Dutch merchants compared to 10% for normal villagers
Placer Mines + Amalgamation Example:
- Placer Mines upgrades coin mine gather rate by 10%
- Amalgamation upgrades coin mine gather rate by 20%
- All gathering upgrades are additive to the base rate (not multiplicative, as far as I know)
- Current Dutch villagers: 0.6 x (1 + 0.15 + 0.10 + 0.20) = 0.87
- Changed Dutch villagers: 0.69 x (1 + 0.10 + 0.20) = 0.897
- Results in an increase in gather rate of 0.027 (exactly a 4.5% bonus)
Thus, making the upgrades essentially an 34.5% upgrade for Dutch merchants compared to 30% for normal villagers
Analysis of Effects in Game:
10 villagers gathering from coin mine:
Conclusions
- As can be seen by the proposed changes make coin mine gather rate upgrade more effective for Dutch. The changes are actually quite minimal in terms of effectiveness relative to the current Dutch villager, about 1.5% to 4.5% with Market upgrades, and so the change to balance should not be significant.
- To repeat the change will result in an increase of effectiveness of upgrades for coin mine gathering rates for Dutch villagers, each upgrade being 15% more effective (Place Mines goes from 10% to 11.5%, Amalgamation goes from 20% to 23%).
- Because Dutch have been given their own unique villager unit, this change should be relatively simple to implement:
(1) Remove 15% gather rate of coin mine bonus
(2) Change base gather rate of coin mine to 0.69 - I believe that this will be a minimal but fun flavor change for Dutch, incentivizing more use of the market for the civilization (as well as other upgrades like Silver Smiths).
Math Calculations:
