Revenge of the land farm

[wolf bite]

Okay, let us go over how the mercs work.

Every time turns are given (called a ?game day?) the game times your land by (depending of race bonuses) about 270.  This is the most mercs you could possibly have.  If you have less than that amount, the game gives you 1% of your possible mercs.  Thus it takes 100 game days to fully fill your mercs based on your land.  If your land dropped before it is full, then it will only fill up to the amount of land you have on that game day.

Let?s spell that out in practical.  Say you have 10,000 land.  On the next game day the computer will figure that you most rats you could have would be 2,700,000 (10,000 times 270).  Assume you had just bought out your mercs and have 0 rats available, your mercs will raise 27,000 (1% of 2,700,000).  Now assume you had made your big land run at 2 in the morning and no one attacks you, how long will it take to have the mercs max out based on your land?  The answer is 100 game days.  We get a game day every 10 minutes; there are 6 game days an hour, which figures out to be a bit over 16 hours.  But let?s assume that after 8 hours, someone takes half your land and you are down to 5,000 land.  The game will figure on the next game day that you are full of mercs (5,000 X 270 rats = 1,350,000) and your mercs will not go up.  But the next night you again gain to 10,000 land and keep it for 8 more hours.  The game sees that you are not at max mercs and keeps giving you 1% of the possible with 10,000.  Eventually you will have full mercs at 2,700,000.

All army mercs are 270 (+/- bonuses) times land given at 1% per game day.
Food is 2,000 (+/- bonuses) times land given at 1% per game day.


Notes:
1.   In the original program the amount of each possible armies was different. For example it was something like, 270 for rats, 240 for weasels, 210 for stoats, and 180 for skiffs.  Be cause of the attacking power of the more expensive critters I like the old way better.
2.   When we were having server usage problems, Retto raised the game day to only once an hour, and changed from 1% to something unknown that is higher.  I assume that when we went back to a game day being every ten minutes, that the mercs refilled at 1% again.

I will poke Shael to look at the code and verify the above.


Wolf Bite
Edit: typo

[The Lady Shael]

After doing some research...

Each player has a number stored for each troop, relating to merc availability. The default starting up value is 5000 for each troop. (100,000 for food)

Every time turns are given (as wolf said, a "game day"), this is what happens to those values:

Troops: (current value = available merc troops)
if your current value is less than 250 * (land + (2 * camps))
current value = current value + (turns given per game day*8*(land + camps))

Food:
if your current value is less than 2000 * (land + foragers)
current value = current value + (50 * (land + foragers))

[wolf bite]

I am sure that was hard for Shael to find so a big thanks to her.

Wow, a lot more complicated then I had thought.  I had figured my math above years ago by doing tests on the regular server.  But then I had no way to know that the camps or foragers I had at the time would have changed my results.

Now that most of you have looked at that with blank eyes, I wanted to work it out, So I might as well put out my findings.

The defalt setting does not really matter because it would only kick in if you have under 50 land.

First let?s assume a leader strategy (all huts). 10,000 land.
Armies:
250 X 10,000 land equals 2,500,000 armies is the max.
On turbo you would get each game day 5 turns X 8 X 10,000 = 400,000 armies.  Thus mercs would almost be full in 6 game days.
On Reg you would get each game day 1 turn X 8 X 10,000 = 80,000 armies. Thus mercs would be almost full in 31 game days.
Food:
2,000 X 10,000 land equals 20,000,000 food is the max.
On both games you would get each game day 500,000 food, thus in 40 games days the food mercs would be full.

Now we have 10,000 land with 2,000 in camps and 2,000 in foragers.
Armies
250 X (10,000 land + (2 X 2,000 camps)) equals 3,500,000 armies is the max.
On turbo you would get each game day 5 turns X 8 X (10,000 + 2,000) = 480,000 armies.  Thus mercs would almost be full in 7 game days.
On Reg you would get each game day 1 turn X 8 X (10,000 + 2,000) = 96,000 armies. Thus mercs would be almost full in 36 game days.
Food:
2,000 X (10,000 land + 2,000 foragers) equals 24,000,000 food is the max.
On both games you would get each game day 50 X (10,000 land + 2,000 foragers) = 600,000 food, thus in 40 games days the food mercs would be full.


Wolf Bite

[taekwondokid42]

So basically, you can get a ton of money, go on, camp online, grab mercs every hour, and have an unbeatable army and an unbeatable leader group in just a few hours.

Perhaps we should change this.

[wolf bite]

On turbo you are right, the mercs will fill up in an hour.  If you have 20% camps, then will go up to 20% more mercs but take an hour and 10 minutes.  This is faster than I had thought. But remember that they can only fill up to what your land is. In the example you would get 2. 5 mil each hour.  Sure in 10 hours you would have 25 mill at a cost of ? a LOT!

If someone can have and not be stolen from having about $152,500,000,000, then maybe they deserve taking the top.  However they would lock their account up and not be able to take a turn with the costs to keep them. Someone could break them with half the rats of 12.5 million at a cost of only 6 billion by doing the same thing.

However, I had always thought it took longer to fill and would not mind a change to slow it down on turbo only.


Wolf Bite

[Shadow]

152 billion isnt even a big achievement with stoat. even 5 or 600 billion isnt a huge surprise if the casher is careful about his leaders

[taekwondokid42]

Looking at the problem realistically, comparing it to this round right now, I would say that a stoat could get up to about 60k land if they tried real hard. Therefore:

They would have about 16.2 mil of each type of unit(assuming 0% camps). That would cost roughly 115bil.

So if you could get up to 600bil (a fairly reasonable number), you could buy out the mercs 5 times (5 hours).

you would have 81 mil of each type of troop.

But is anyone massing rats? Because someone would have no more than 30k land at their disposal, they could probably not get up enough rats to break the other person. Enough of any other type of troop is ridiculous with only 60k land at your disposal.

Now, supposing you waited extra long and got 1.2 tril, you would certainly be un-breakable, so long as you could go without being attacked for 10 hours. From experience, I believe that if you went on a run every time you had 450 turns, you could mass up 1.2 tril in 20-25 days.


Long story short: It is hard to do a fortress strat.

But lets look at another side to the problem. Suppose all you did was buy skiffs with your 600 bil?

You could get 180 mil! That would be 1 bil networth. It might take a while though. 12 hours. I doubt anyone can online- camp for 12 hours straight.

[Shadow]

there is no need for 81 mil skiffs and weasels

you could go with half that number and double or triple that rats and stoats. it would just take a few more hours, but if you are dedicated just do it late

[Peace Alliance]

I've been looking into the code and almost found how to make it so the amount of mercs available is affected by unit multipliers. I found where all of it is in the code, now i just need to know php, hah