So I did some testing in skirmish/ai and found that 5 vils herdable could make a constant production loop - in the time it takes a group of 5 vils to get through 10 fattened sheep/cows another batch of 10 fully fattens at a different pen. You set up two and cycle through them.
I did this with vils boosted by economic theory and ranching for cow access. Accounting for the decay and food invested, I came to around 15.2 ideally placed vils on farms with all techs and refrigeration. In other words, 10 vills on herdable and 40 on farms with eco theory is the same or slightly better than 50 on farms with refrigeration. 5 on cows, 45 on farms is about the same.
The minimum requirement is ranching for cow access - no fulling mills, stockyards, etc. Then trade out refrigeration for eco theory/textile mills/etc. Overall the idea is to end up with a better gold eco without sacrificing food on land maps in treaty. Thoughts?
Edit: Tested on a cycle of sheep - 5 vill with no extra cards can stay at constant work between 2 pens. Need to refresh each herd on a period of 5 min, 10 sec (310 sec).
livestock for treaty has always been viable but extremely micro intensive.
just the attention to constantly switch from farm to livestock is a lot (since you want all the livestock to die as fast as possible to train the next batch) so you have to delete them, set the vils, train the next batch, put vils back to farm, etc. all the while also fighting and building constantly.
its kinda how china is supposed to be played in treaty but I am not good enough to pull it off consistently
Less efficient but more manageable way might be to just have a group 4-5 vills go through the animals 1 by 1.
Each pen can fatten 10 animals at a time, so the idea is to line up the time to finnish fattening with the time the vills get through 10 already fattened ones - and while the vills go through the next batch, the freed pen can train and fatten another batch of 10.
In my experiment, 10 fattened cows took about 7 min an 20 sec for 5 vills (with eco theory) to go through them all. At the other pen, the cows took 5 min and 5 sec to fatten (only selective breeding). Add in 30 sec to train the cows and theres a wide window for the cows to fatten and let the vills work constantly.
I’ll see if the vill the number can be optimized more but the basic plan involves making a cycle that you check every 5 ish min to train 10 animals and keep a small number of vills in constant work. Thats about enought to offset a lack refridgeration.
You are just kinda moving the micro point since that means you have to individually train the livestock in each pen one after another to ensure that the sequence is held.
It also kinda gets very much harder once you have fulling mills since the gather rate shoots up.
also reading this why get rid of refridgeration? that also speeds up livestock gathering, get rid of sustainable agriculture or food silos
Imagine that there are 10 cows fat and ready in one pen (P1) and it takes 460 sec to go through all of them. Now another pen (P2) is sitting empty. It takes 305 sec to fatten up to 10 more cows here - they train in batches of 5 with a train time of 15 sec; so to train two batches of 5 you need another 30 sec for a total of 335 to ready P2.
Now when the vils deplete P1 and move over to P2, I have another 460 sec to repopulate P1. I put 10 in que, takes the 535 sec to spawn and fatted, then the vills return in about 65 sec to gather them again and I que another 10 in P2.
Note that I make no animals for P1 or P2 until the entire batch is depleted - only when one herd is at zero and the vils migrate to the other pen that I que a whole 10 animals at once in the empty pen. The new herd fattens by the time the vils finish at the other pen so vils are working constantly between the two herds, which is the goal. Making animals as they deplete is prolly more efficient in terms of conserving animal fattening time but as long as the vills are at constant work I dont wanna spend the micro to optimize further.
Refrigeration is replaced because the end goal isnt to make more food; its to use pens to offset the lack of a food gathering card. E.x 45 basic farms + 5 herders = 50 farms +card. Then replace the empty spot with another gold gathering card - mint or textiles pref but eco theory is safer since it boosts food along with a bit for gold.
Edit: 365 is 6 min 5 sec - corrected to 305 for actual time of 5 min, 5 sec and proceeding calcs.
This doesn’t sound like it will give you any more food then just using a mill with all the food gathering cards. Especially in treaty when I am battling it out I don’t have time to keep replenishing my pens. Unless this increases your food output significantly over a mill it’s seems to be to micro intensive
Just don’t play treaty these stupid calculations dude damn.
In the test I ran I had 4 pens - 2 making sheep and 2 making cows - and 2 groups of 4 vils cycling them. With eco theory they gave a constant food income of about 943 food/min. Then add 2220 food/min from the 42 farmers and you get an avg of 3163 food/min. It fluctuates up and down between 3100 and 3600 but thats the net sum. So its add ranching and sub in eco theory with refrigeration.
I ran this in a deck with textiles and royal mint so stacking that with eco game me a gpm varying between 2800 - 3100 with 50 post imp vils on plantations. With post imp vils and only royal mint it 50 on plantations give an avg of 2571 gpm.
This setup is to have alot more gold without losing too much food as opposed to having more food in general.
Yeah that isnt a good idea in treaty, the most draining resource in the lategame is food, not gold. The reason why the standard-ish build in treaty is to use cards like fur-trade is to build up a giant reserve of gold and then slowly drain it while having almost entirely focusing on food, which is the fastest gathering and also often the fastest draining resource.
the only civs where this may not apply is dutch, swede and germany since they have gold heavy units, but they have other ways around that, dutch have banks, swedes have torps and the fish crates and germany has settler wagons
You are also just one bad distraction away from disrupting your entire food supply so its not a stable strat
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They should just make vills automatically harvest the next fattened cows, like how haciendas do that for mexico with the card.
All thats true, but was testing for civs like the french/russians/ottomans that have an above average cav/cannon comp which is what I personally prefer.
The new ottos especially need a much closer food to gold income if you wanna keep up nizam and abus numbers to supplement the artillery/cav archer army.
Aren’t Fish crates the replacement for cow shipments?