My Economic Reform Plan Proposal

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
24

That’s kinda misguided. Factories are quite different since they are irreplaceable and not available to everyone that can farm livestock.

All you have to do is make pens worse than mills if you use them the same way for passive resource generation, but better if you are investing and actively managing them. If passive trickles have a prohibitively long payback period, and unmanaged villagers are working less efficiently, than at a mill, they won’t just replace mills in all cases.

The trickles should only be for fully fattened livestock tasked at the pen and should be low enough that the payback period is prohibitive. I’d suggest something like a trickle of 0.04 coin/second for sheep and 0.08 food/second for cows. At unupgraded rates that would be a payback period of ~52 minutes for sheep and ~29 minutes for cows (including fattening time and assuming 100 food investment). At that rate of return, you’re better off on mills. But what it would do is make actively managed livestock pens a bit more forgiving since if you didn’t pay close enough attention, the fattened livestock would still be giving a bit of value instead of essentially being idle as they are now. Cards for faster fattening rates and larger trickles could improve these rates.

The other factor would be managing villagers’ idle time. Right now, if there are no fattened livestock, the villager has nothing to do and goes idle. At a minimum, they should have the option to work at the livestock pen to speed up the fattening process. This should be so inefficient that it would be a better use of villager seconds to re-task them to a mill instead. However, it would still be better than them just going idle as they do now.

Overall, the trickles and villagers’ actions should make it so livestock ranching is not so unforgiving with idle time as it is now, but they should be low enough that it isn’t going to be better than mills without active management and investment.

That’s not at all what I’m saying. The toggle would be for if you want to slaughter them or keep them for milk/wool, not for what animal to raise (the type of animal you are raising would determine what the trickle is, not the toggle). You’d only really need that if you could harvest from animals without killing them, and I think a really low trickle rate would be a simpler option anyways.

25

This is an unnecessary annoyance because the two sides are not comparable. When a Factory doesn’t need Settlers to generate resources, its identity is completely different from a Livestock Pen/Mill/Estate that needs Settlers.

My stance is to have settlers and livestock share slots to simplify the design and aid understanding. At this point, it will be similar to the existing Hacienda slot concept.

Furthermore, fattening, the most versatile and fundamental mechanism for livestock in the game, must be independent of these new stuff. Let the new things be after it has been fattened. It is very unacceptable that while livestock of other civilizations can naturally fatten up, European civs do not.

Let me explain my idea more clearly with an example.
Here are some premises.

  • Assuming that in the late game, after we have finished researching the techs on the Mill/Estate, a Settler can generate 0.9 resources per second on a Mill/Estate.
  • In Livestock Pen, there are 20 slots. Each slot can be occupied by 1 livestock or 1 Settler. (A Cow still only occupies 1 slot here, to help illustrate.)
  • When a livestock that has not yet reached its fattest is tasked on a Livestock Pen, it would only speed up fattening, as the current Livestock Pen mechanic.
  • When a Cow continues to be tasked on there after being fattened, it can increase the cap of the Livestock Pen’s trickle by +0.4 resources per second (eg +0.2 food & +0.2 coin or +0.3 food & +0.1 coin). Different type of livestock have different values, only Cow (cattle) are used here as an example.
  • When a Settler is tasked on a Livestock Pen, it can cause the Livestock Pen to generate a trickle of 0.9 resources per second (total as much as generated on Mill/Estate in the late game, but no tech needed here), before the trickle reaches the cap.

Then there’s simple math.
Number of Settlers * 0.9 / number of fattened Cows * 0.4 = theoretical trickle generated / cap of trickle = actual trickle generated
0 * 0.9 / 20 * 0.4 = 0 / 8 = 0
1 * 0.9 / 19 * 0.4 = 0.9 / 7.6 = 0.9
2 * 0.9 / 18 * 0.4 = 1.8 / 7.2 = 1.8
…
5 * 0.9 / 15 * 0.4 = 4.5 / 6 = 4.5
6 * 0.9 / 14 * 0.4 = 5.4 / 5.6 = 5.4 (the optimal ratio)
7 * 0.9 / 13 * 0.4 = 6.3 / 5.2 = 5.2
…
18 * 0.9 / 2 * 0.4 = 16.2 / 0.8 = 0.8
19 * 0.9 / 1 * 0.4 = 17.1 / 0.4 = 0.4
20 * 0.9 / 0 * 0.4 = 18 / 0 = 0

Of course, all of these stats can be adjusted to keep balance. But in this example, we now know that having a Livestock Pen with 6 Settlers and 14 fattened Cows generates the best amount of resources. In practice, the value provided by each type of livestock is different, and it is possible to raise multiple types at the same Livestock Pen at the same time, so the optimal ratio is not fixed. Just try to get as close to there as possible, and the player can roughly have a decent harvest, so players don’t have to worry about needing to calculate the math in detail.

The Livestock Pen’s build limit (eg 2) would make the player in the best case only have few Settlers working there (12 in this example), the rest of the Settlers would still need Mills/Estates eventually. In the late game, whether on Livestock Pens or Mills/Estates, this design makes the amount of resources generated per Settler basically same, so it should not affect the economy too much.

More importantly, as long as there are fattened livestock, it is equivalent to letting the Settlers directly generate as many resources as on the late-game Mill/Estate. A Livestock Pen is a lot cheaper than a Mill/Estate (e.g. only takes 100 wood), which makes it very advantageous in the transition between hunting and farming. Just with the Livestock Pen, the players have the opportunity to build less Mills/Estates. Ideally, players should try out the Livestock Pen before using the Mill/Estate, so the Livestock Pen would not just be a decoration on the Mill/Estate.

26

Don’t make this too complicated or alienate existing players.
I think the African royals did well was make Livestock vital for the economies of African civs.

Not just the buying and selling, but just having livestock is good for your influence income that you might even age up with Oromo/Fulani just for the goats.

This is my revised reformation.

  • Sheep, Goats, Yak and lama trickle coin for most civs except Africans and indians (which trickle influence and XP as they currently do). Water buffalo and cows are unchanged.
  • Ranching card replaced with advanced livestock pen card.
  • Cattle ranching is now an upgrade that is available in the Fortress age.
  • Fulling mills increases trickle
  • foraging boosted by farming upgrades, herdable gather rate boosted by hunting upgrades.
27

Because African civs were designed from scratch. Their design revolves around livestock from the very beginning. Of course they did well.

However, we are talking about changes in existing old civilizations, especially in European civs. This means that we should not allow livestock to become as indispensable to these civilizations as they are to African civs. The Livestock mechanic for Europeans can be made more interesting, but should be as non-net buff as possible, especially in the late game.

That alone is the net buff to worry about.

The OP’s idea was already to simply give the livestock a trickle, but then we came to the conclusion that it would be an unacceptable change without relying on Settlers to generate resources, as the late game would be unbalanced. I modified the OP’s idea in order to fix this.

It’s actually not complicated at all. It looks a long example for explanation, but that’s just because I want to carefully state it in detail to let it easy to understand for even a kid.

There are only two key takeaways: Settlers generate resources, and fattening livestock determines how many resources Settlers can generate at most.