In a related forum i ran the approximate bonuses vs cost associated with building the ideal 3 granaries in a block pyramid configuration with each granary encircled with 12 farms.
I APPROXIMATE
6.5 farms where within all 3 auras for a combined 30% bonus.
11.5 farms inside the 20% auras
And 18 farms just having 10% auras.
This would make the 36 farms have an effective average buff of 16.8% each.
And when you compare the cost of standard farms and mills that would equate to the same totals you need about 42 farms and 6 mills. If you ignore the cost of villagers for a moment you end up investing the exact same amount of wood to efficiently build 42 farms and 6 mills as you spend wood wise building 3 granaries and 36 farms efficiently. So the legit bonus is that you save 6 villagers!! that can be tasked to something else (240+ resources per min). That’s cool!!
But…here are all the problems
- The initial investment is steeper for the granary option.
- The standard farm and mill is extremely flexible when it comes to space management. The granary HAS TO BE SETUP CORRECTLY or you already start losing benefits. AND the 3 granary configuration mandates an extremely large open space of 192 tiles (ironically That’s the same amount of tiles required for 42 farms and 6 mills…just not all in one place and in one exact configuration)
- The PUP granary does NOT properly populate farms around it when using the auto generation function to build farms to encircle the granary. Meanwhile farms auto genrate around mills pretty consistently.
- Lastly it is not until the complete 36 farm 3 granary config is complete that you legit start to harness the bonus over the standard 42 farms 6 mills alternative.
All things considered 
this is not a convenient civ bonus. So I’ll like to suggest a few changes.
First correct the auto farm population function to properly orient 12 farms around a granary.
Secondly consider raising the base bonus of each granary from 10% to 20% and dropping the effect of granary stack bonus! Being the building is locked behind dynasty china cannot do what English can immediately do with feudal farms. And china doesn’t get a discount upfront so the high investment should reap immediate rewards IMO.
A similar but different approach to the last suggestion is to rasie the base granary rate from 10% to 15% and add 3% bonus gathering to all granary auras per additional granary built. For example if you have only 1 granary build the aura will boost all farms within to just 15% bonus gather rate; once you build your 2nd granary both granaries’ auras will receive a 3% additional bonus for a total of 18% boost; finally building your last granary will grant you your final 3% additional boost for a total of 21% boost for all farms inside any granary’s aura. This would return the granary to its pre PUP power level gradually AND no longer mandate the 192 tiles be all in one place!! Overlapping auras would NO LONGER stack nor need to given this direction. Now we’d have the flexibility to build the granaries however we please!!! And whereever we please!!
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Thanks for putting in the work. Of course we already knew Granaries are a huge trap and not worth building, but now we have some numbers.
So in practice, no one is going to be able to build the perfect pyramid shape. You don’t have these tiles in your base and every game and map is different, so you cannot exactly plan for these. And obviously you will have Mills somewhere in there aswell, since you obviously will not delete your starting mills just to make space, this would be a waste of wood.
These investments into granaries are simply not worth it. They were never worth it when they were in Yuan Dynasty and they are not worth it now in PUB.
I have no idea why the devs would consider nerfing granaries.
These Dynasties are supposed to be a civ bonus. A bonus which does nothing unless you spend ressources. So this needs to be an actual bonus and not break even.
To make them useful they should got back to 15% and only cost 100 wood. That way they will be worth building and they will pay off after some time.
Again, they need to be better than regular farms + mills. And you need to account that they need to be better without build the perfect formation, because this will simply not happen in practice.
Chinese is already picked the least, the civ is overly complicated and the effort put in does not yield the results you can get by simply picking other civs. This needs to change.
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My last 2 suggestion were do away with having to connect the granary auras and instead have a flat buff per granary or have a combined buff per granary on the field: 1 granary =15% aura, 2 granaries= 18% auras each, and 3 granaries = 21% auras each.
The current configuration mandate is too stringent. Yes most maps do not provide 192 tiles in base perfectly to drop these granaries + farms–some maps you can find the space mid map lol GG.
Lastly if one of the 2 suggestions are implemented and they are concerned about it being to strong then they can change the aura around each granary to ONLY buff the 12 squares around it.
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This is an excellent post, and thank you for doing the math. I want to add that because of how farming works, a 10% buff in gather rate does not actually translate to 10% more income, as there is both walk time and farm regen time to consider. So what this means is that the increase in income is actually less than 16.8%, or basically that those 36 farms+3 granaries are actually producing less food than 42 farms and 6 mills. So that just proves that post PUP granaries aren’t worth it at all.
Relic, please see this and keep the granary at 15% boost instead of 10%. If it truely does turn out to be OP, we can nerf it later
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I crossposted your post to reddit, becasue I think it needs to be seen more.
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I would like to see getting some tax bonus instead of getting food, since I am rarely lack of food playing chinese. Then, Imperial Academy+Granary can be a decent late game gold income. I am not too greedy, just make them has similar gold income as English ones.
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Lol not too greedy? 
english get 1 gold per farmer per 3.5s… So in 60s 1 farmer will generate 17 gold. Mind you that’s instantly stockpiled and doesnt have to be subsequently collected. Even if you could fit every dropoff to occur within the Imperial academy aura you’d need 2.125 times the villagers as english has farmers to keep pace…nevermind having to collect it thru taxes…
Having said that, the tax gimmick thru china os stronger than english farm tax given you get access to the gold immediately in dark age at no extra cost and stuff like the imperial palace can bolster the tax collection effects.
I personally love the tax collection gimmick i just which the AI controlling the IO was smarter. For example i have 35 tax on my mill and 36 tax on my lumber camp… currently an auto tax collect would collect all of one of those then travel to the next spot to max out at 40… then drop of 40 tax and be idle for the next 20s until collecting the rest.
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This is exactly my point that even Song dynasty+Imperial academy+granary, its benefit from farms is far from english ones. At late game, farms are the only stable tax income. Since other res will be miles away. So put some tax benefit into granary is a reasonable hope.
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Devs hate China. Don’t expect anything to get buffed for them. EVER
They have to know that China is suffering and needs help but they change it and then nerf. Makes no sense other then they hate the CIV
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They are same USA government.
Microsoft too. Relic Entertainment is employee for USA government and Microsoft .
Global (USA,West) anti China now.
My English isn’t that good.
I am Thai at Thailand.
ฉันเป็นคนเŕ¸ŕą€ŕ¸Šŕ¸µŕ¸˘
สวัสดี ขŕ¸ŕ¸šŕ¸„ุณ
Change Fire Lancer to Jinyiwei
I love Jinyiwei.
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Although I am with you, I am sure your post will be banned soon, LOL
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New math has to be done!!! My original in game computation were retrieved without wheelbarrow and this is important because wheelbarrow significantly increase the efficiency of RICE farms which is what china has!! So I’ll have to compare wheelbarrow 42 farms and mill to that of 36 farms and granaries.
The theoretical numbers suggests 36 farms optimize around granaries should generate as much as 42 farms optimized around mills. This nets a savings of 6 villagers that can now be tasked otherwise!!
My guess is real numbers will net a 4 villager savings in favor of granary setup… 4 doesn’t feel like a perk?
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4 villagers could be a boost if it is feudel age related…
But building 3 graneries in feudel is not gonna happen with the prize, might even be the prize is to high for a single one right now. …
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NEW MATH
So this time I researched wheelbarrow before comparing the performance of standard mill + farm to that of the granary + farm.
KEY FINDINGS
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The Mill actually has lopsided issue! The actually mill that the villagers touch when they complete drop-off animation is deliberately on the LEFT inside the square the mill occupies! This means all farmers on the RIGHT side of the mill have to walk further than those on the LEFT side of the mill.
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In like manner the granary is a circular structure so the closer the farm gets to the corners of the square the granary occupies the longer it takes the farm to reach the circular granary object for the drop-off animation.
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It APPEARS the higher the granary gathering buff gets (10%, 20%, 30%) the less efficiently the bonus applies. I found 10% granary buff translated into 11.37%, 20% granary buff translated into 19.11%; and 30% translated into 26.95%.
NOTE: For my next experiment I wanna see if horticulture 15% food bonus effects the granary bonus efficacies.
All in all by way of extrapolation, assuming the granary drop-off inefficiencies were canceled out by the mill drop-off inefficiencies, and assuming the 42 farmers around the standard mill would behave similarly equates to 42 rice farmers around standard mills having only researched wheelbarrow generate on average 26.38 food/s ( 1583.18 food/min). Meanwhile 36 rice farmers on the optimum granary configuration plus wheelbarrow, assuming 6.5 farmer experience the 30% (actually 26.95%) granary buff, 11.5 farmers experience the 20% (actually 19.11%) granary buff, and 18 farmers experience the 10% (actually 11.37%) granary buff to equates to 26.40 food/s ( 1584.19 food/min)
CONCLUSION
Having only added wheelbarrow I found the granary pyramid to hold water to it’s ideal 6 villager displacement over that the standard mill config!
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I think you just exposed one of the biggest “scam” in AOE IV. The investment of 250*3 = 750 wood for approx 17% bonus that’s gated behind a dynasty, plus it’s not always possible to get the best setup so it’s probably more like 12%.
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Pretty much all of the Age IV gather rate techs are a scam, because they cost so much you can expect them to never pay for themselves in a normal game.
Fun fact #1 the Chinese special tech in the university, which offers a 5% gather rate improvement for every Dynasty you have reached (so min 5% and max 20%) was quite useful since it wasn’t very expensive and its usually a 10% bonus from Song Dynasty. But that got nerfed in the PUB patch. Because its Chinese and the devs love nerfing Chinese.
Fun Fact #2
Abbasids have a tech which increases dropped off ressources by 8% (so its multiplicative) similar to what Imperial official does.
But since Abbasids are not Chinese, this has not been nerfed.
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I think you can’t just look at the perfect late game setup for granaries as farms are usually gradually added over the course of the game. Typically, you add a few at a time whenever a food source runs out, but not 30-40 at once.
Let’s entertain the question: Is it worth it to build a granary with 12 farms around it instead of mills for the same cost?
Well, the setup costs 1150 wood which is equivalent to 2 mills and 14 farms. Let’s say the 10% gather bonus holds up. In that case the granary offers 13,2 vills of food income and employs 12 villagers. The mills employ 14 and gather as 14.
In summary, for the same price you gather slightly less food with your farm setup, but you do so more efficiently which allows you to allocate the extra vills to other ressources.
A small add-on: Granaries also have benefits regarding the IO mechanics. Boosting them is more efficient than boosting a mill and more a efficient, compact eco makes collecting taxes easier and faster. Higher gather rates also generate more tax income.
Personally, I would build granaries whenever possible. I wouldn’t go for Song just to build granaries ofc. Usually Zhuge Nu or the faster vill rate are the reason to go Song, but when you do building granaries is quite beneficial imo.
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I already made these granary observations in my previous posts.
The difference with granary vs farms isn’t so much the cost as it is the proper positioning! With farms you basically just drop it almost anywhere, boom boom boom. Unless you don’t care to get the average 16%+ farm bonus, you can’t just drop your granary willy-nilly AND you can’t auto build farms in a perfect square around the granary the way it works around a mill by clicking 8 times.
Lastly Farms more than any other resources super greatly from increase gather rates BECAUSE wheelbarrow forces farmers to walk between to tiles to gather 15 resources AND the reseeding mechanic doesn’t speed up with increase gather rates. Rice fields already force one to walk between two tiles to get 10-15 food, so wheelbarrow doesn’t negatively effect rice farms, but greatly increase gather rates still negates the overall efficiency since you don’t walk faster between tiles, and the reseed (though being faster than wheat farms) still doesn’t speed up so in practice the farmer walks further away from the mill/granary the faster the gather rate is.
I say all that to say this. Instead of having overlapping granary aura stack and giving some villagers 20% and other 30%; remove the overlapping aspect of the buff and instead have the bonus increase EACH AURA base on the number of granaries on the map. So 1 granary = 12% aura per granary; 2 granaries= 15% aura per granary; 3 granaries = 18%+. There are multiple benefits to this approach.
- You no longer are required allocate 192 tiles in one spot in a specific configuration in order to gain the max granary benefits.
- The inefficiencies that come with having high gathering rates is alleviated by having what was the average gather rate now being the flat gathering rate.
- With the new approach to the granary you can technically fit MORE farms inside the aura and maintain efficacies by creating adjacent mills.
It’s a WIN WIN!!!
Maybe I misread somewhere, but I understood your posts as an analysis of the full three granary setup. Mine just adds a view of the single granary without overlap and I would argue it’s still worth building. The food income on farms alone might be lower than for mills, but the freed up vills more than make up for it. There is no need to chase the perfect setup.
I don’t mind your suggested changes, though.
True. Irrational balance decisions like these are what make the game loses players.
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