Galava

[Tezkat]

Heh... fun with acronyms...


Deadly Muffins For All
Danger - Mow Feeding Area
Dark Magick Fae Assembly
Demented Mab Fanatic Army
Deranged Mad Furry Asylum
Demon Mares' Fiery Abyss
Dirty Men Fondling Abel




Other orders of business...

With respect to the prospective treaties... since nobody else has any strong feelings one way or another about the protectorate, I'll pose the question another way: What is the highest level of participation in allies' wars that you'd be willing to include in a treaty?

Jumping in when you feel like it (ODP or some kind of friendship pact)?
Mandatory defence if they come under attack (MDP)?
Mandatory support in their campaigns of aggression (MADP)?

We might start out with something like a protectorate, but, left to my own devices, I'll be inclined to include language that opens the door to more opportunities for war. Galava is much smaller than CN. You don't need a hundred players to matter here. As more of us come over to the game, we'll be increasingly able to hold our own.


QUICKSTART NEWBIE GUIDE:

Land is king. Land = gold/resources/everything. Worry about buying progression only when you're at your land caps or close to getting a new province (or when you need greater market capacity). Spend on resource buildings (Farms/Mills/Mines) before anything else. They're the only things that really help your economy. Food is so expensive at the moment that housing/roads are roughly revenue neutral, or even running at a loss.

You get to add extra resource buildings every 75 land, starting at 188 (so... 188, 263, 338, etc.). There's not much point to exploring until you can reach one of those milestones. You'll get an extra house/road/wall every 5 land.

The game's resources are currently grossly unbalanced in favour of food, and likely to remain so for some time, so preferentially explore your food lands. (You can have up to a 70-30 mix.) Food is worth more than 10x what any other resource is worth, because Sandro's been working on the war system rather than trying to fix the economy. Anyone who hasn't yet created their first province, go Plains/Coastal or Plains/Hills. Spend your university points on food as well.

Forget about troops/workshop/armory for now. You can't even fight until you get your second province (60 progression). Also, the war system doesn't actually work yet.

For those of you who just joined and would like aids, the most efficient way to boost people is not to use the actual foreign aid system, but instead to exploit the market as a surrogate aid system. Put batches of resources (doesn't matter what kind) on the market at 10x10000PPU (100k gold per batch), and we'll buy them up when we have spare cash.

EDIT:

Forgot something important: Tax rate. Increasing your tax rate raises your gold income and lowers your resource production. Thus, optimal tax rate depends on the current market price of resources (i.e. when it's better to buy vs produce your own). The easy way to find the tipping point is to divide the difference in gold production at high vs low taxes by the difference in resource production. At the moment, due to the exorbitant price of food, it's virtually guaranteed that 10% will be the best tax rate for some time.

[Ganurath]

Hmm... let's see...

Coastal/Mountain is a decent starting combo. Right now, food is king. You might have to sell stone and buy wood to balance out your growth, which is unfortunate since stone is selling for about half the price of wood (and 1/4 the price of food). The resources aren't balanced yet. It's beta.

And for this reason, I'm going to voice the opinion that the best starting combo for land is Coastal Primary, Forest Secondary. Let's compare it to Mountain Secondary:

Trade Resources: Both land's resources decrease construction costs. Iron boosts attack, though, which is worthless atm, whereas Cherry Wood increases commerce. More money!

Food: Forest and Mountain impose the same penalty to food production, so you'll have a net bonus of 20% either way.

Wood: More expensive than stone, and thus you want more. The bonus of forest secondary negates the penalty of Coastal primary, but if you go Mountain secondary like I did you get a honkin' penalty of -33.3%. Ouch.

Stone: The one point where Mountain secondary has a meaningful edge. They get a bonus of 13.3% even after the Coastal penalty. With Forest secondary, you get a net penalty of -20%. However, with improved commerce and having a surplus of a more expensive building resource, you're in an advantagous position of being able to sell wood, buy stone, and net a profit if it's an even trade.

Defense: Mountain is better, but war doesn't work and it's your first province, so it's meaningless and we won't bother with the math. Blegh.

Trade: Forest provides a net edge over Mountains for Trade bonuses of +5%.

Conlclusion: I'll be switching from Mountain Secondary to Forest Secondary after the Beta ends.

[Tezkat]

The post you quoted is several months out of date.


I'd say anyone joining us now would be doing themselves an enormous disservice by not creating a food-food province. Maybe if Sandro fixes the economy, food-wood might be useful. However, the game is currently set up in such a way that food is being consumed about three times faster than any other resource. Thus, food becomes the bottleneck for everything, and it's price will rise as high as the gold supply will allow, whereas the others will gradually become worthless due to extreme oversupply. Unless there are enormous changes to the structure of the game (and, honestly, I seriously doubt tha the proposed castle system will be it), that will continue to be the case for the forseeable future.


Defense is irrelevant for a first province, but you'll want to have a high(er) defense province for war mode (2nd or 3rd province). The defense-based land types are severely gimped economically. Unless the tiny incremental increase in structural defense turns out to make a huge difference, it's probably much better to set up a stone-stone province as your outer wall. And if you do that, you really don't want to have stone lands anywhere but your border. I made that mistake, and I'm now sitting on close to 2 million units of worthless stone. You can barely give the stuff away.


Remember that you can always use the extra slot per province to trade for any bonus resources you need, and they only stack three times anyway.

Construction bonuses are very helpful early on, but they rapidly become less valuable simply because wood and stone are so cheap.

The food bonus from Plains is +60% compared to +40% for Coastal. Since food is 15x more expensive than everything else, that's huge. Furthermore, population buffs are--for good or bad (since high food prices literally eat away at profits)--effectively double bonuses. They increase the capacity of housing and also increase the level above 100% occupancy around which your population will fluctuate. (So +4% population from Elderberry will actually boost citizen count by close to 8% once your houses are full.) Commerce is dependend on citizen count, just like taxes, so it's useless without population.


Also note that provinces tend towards a 50-50 land distribution in most empires simply because disproportionate exploration takes a lot longer.

[fisherman]

Hi DMFA folks, fisherman from the thugs here.  Just checking in.  I love reading your stuff Tezkat, even though I pretty much know it all already.  I'm trying to figure out wether or not to build houses in my food provinces and switch to 20%, any input?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Idle question: what sort of rate should I be running taxes at, and how do I sign up to the guild? ;-]

Edit: Scratch the guild bit, I found it. My other question stands, though.

[Darkdragon]

Although I have not done the maths, I do think in a food province would be more valuable producing food as opposed to Gold, as food is going for over 90 ppu. Unless you realize you can actually buy more food with the extra gold, I don't see a reason to set taxes at 20%.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Running a quick test:

Tax	Gold	Food	Wood	Stone
20	294	106	55	50
19	282	107	56	51
18	271	108	56	52
17	260	110	57	52
16	249	111	58	53
15	238	112	58	53
14	227	113	59	54
13	217	114	60	55
12	206	116	60	55
11	196	117	61	56
10	186	118	62	56

10% is probably the most effective, given the way the money flows. Of course, you kinda need a lot more people before this starts working out...

[Tezkat]

Ya want maths?


GOLD

Houses give you 4.5 citizens apiece. Population near the cap naturally fluctuates around 100% +/- 5%. Population bonuses appear to affect both the caps and the wiggle range. (With +6% population, mine usually varied from 100-111%. At +10%, it's gone as high as 116%.) So it may actually provide a double bonus. That's either good or bad, depending on the price of food.


Tax income... I haven't been able to make my data look like the equations Sandro posted.  The province overview screen shows Revenue/Citizen = 80 * Bonus * TaxRate. I haven't been able to work that into anything useful. Basically, I've got...

TaxIncome = (1 + EmpireIncomeBonus) * BaseCitizenIncome * #Citizens

I've got BaseCitizenIncome at around 8.23 for 10% tax rate and 18.03 for 20% tax rate. The relationship is linear. As best I can tell, it isn't actually related ot the numbers posted in the province overview. And 20% tax isn't double 10% tax.


Commerce income is independent of tax rate:

CommerceIncome = #Citizens * CommerceBonus * RoadBonus * BaseCommerce

CommerceBonus is based on land distribution and bonus resources. The bonuses are additive (CommerceBonus = 1 + LandBonus + ResourceBonus). RoadBonus is your road coverage (RoadBonus = 1 + #Roads/MaxRoads).

I've got BaseCommerce at 7.24 for an empire with three provinces and 8.71 for four.

(By the way, if any of you new guys want to help out with my data collection, post commerce data for your empires. I'd need commerce income, population, land distribution, road count, and bonus resources.)


RESOURCES

ResourceIncome = #Buildings * ResourceBonus * ResourceRate

I'm getting a base ResourceRate around 74.49 at 10% tax and 66.65 at 20%. It's a linear function of tax rate.

ResourceBonus includes bonuses from land type, university, weather, and artifacts. All the bonuses are additive. You need to use the land bonus from a proper land distribution calculator instead of the province overview, or you might get some rounding errors.


UPKEEP

House
4.5 Gold, 0.5 Wood, 0.5 Stone
(Plus each citizen eats 0.36 Food. Soldiers eat 0.036 Food--1/10 of what a normal person eats.)

Resource Building (any)
13.5 Gold, 4.5 Wood, 4.5 Stone

Road
0.5 Gold, 0.1 Wood

Wall
0.5 Gold, 0.1 Stone

Land
1.78 Gold (?)

Workshop maintenance slowly increases in price depending on how many toys you have. Siege units start off costing about 4 wood and 2 stone per update, while defensive units cost 2 wood and 4 stone--regardless of what type of resource you used to buy them. It hits ~2.75/5.5 at around 68 units. The costs appear to increase independently for each type of unit.


Housing is barely breaking even for me at the moment at 10% taxes, and I have some very large income and commerce bonuses in my empire.

In practice, the real market price of resources is usually within +/- 10% of whatever the lowest offer is at the moment. Below that, it sells instantly. Higher than that may take longer than 24 hours to sell, if at all. So you can safely assume that the price on the first few pages is correct.

Want to know when to change taxes? Find out the market price of the difference in resources collected at the higher and lower tax rates. Compare that to the difference in gold revenue. If the former is higher, lower taxes. If the latter is higher, raise it. Unless the price of food drops significantly or Sandro makes other changes to the economy, 10% will be the best for some time to come.

[Ganurath]

CommerceIncome = #Citizens * CommerceBonus * RoadBonus * BaseCommerce

CommerceBonus is based on land distribution and bonus resources. The bonuses are additive (CommerceBonus = 1 + LandBonus + ResourceBonus). RoadBonus is your road coverage (RoadBonus = 1 + #Roads/MaxRoads).

...That's it, I'm going to max out roads once I'm done building the new resource centers. Triple my commerce? Hell yes!

[Tezkat]

Um... double. And roads don't really do much unless you beef up your housing first.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

As usual, I've been going about all this completely backwards.

Oh, well. Stop buying roads and houses, and just buy farms, mills, mines, and land, in that order, until I need more houses. Or something.

[Ganurath]

Um... double. And roads don't really do much unless you beef up your housing first.

Road Bonus = +X percent, where X is the percent of maximum roads you have built. I currently have 10/38, which is less than a third (almost a quarter) of maximum: 26%. As such, I have a 26% roads bonus. If I max my roads, I'll have a 100% roads bonus, nearly four times that ammount. Subtract for upkeep, and even if you're generous to the side of pessimism you're still at least tripling commerce.

Edit: I found the aid section while looking to protect my woodsies. I decided to stick some of the excess money from selling food in the storehouse so I'd have seed money in case I got rushed after I got my second province, and I found that the aid feature was a subsection thereof.

Edit 2: I've come up with a couple builds for the post-Beta.

Magic Marauders:
Hills/Coastal
Tundra/Swamp
Coastal/Swamp
Coastal/Tundra
Trade: Get 3 of each of your land type's resources. This is the build you want for those who want to run heavy on the magic, with 30% max mana and 42% regeneration.

Urban Empire:
Plains/Coastal
Desert/Forest
Coastal/Forest
Coastal/Desert
Trade: Get 3 of each of your land type's resources. Decent construction and commerce bonuses, and ridiculous citizen income bonuses.

[Tezkat]

Yeah... foreign aid...

The foreign aid system is interesting. You only have three incoming aid slots per week, but unlimited outgoing transactions. A decent sized empire can receive up to 2 points of progression per transaction. This has interesting consequences for progression trading (which is like tech trading). Three newbies can supply the entire guild with 6 progression per week, regardless of the number of empires. It's not a lot, but every little bit helps.

To pay for it, we use the market. Put up bundles of resources at 10k PPU. You can also sell the general public, with the number of resources in the bundle determining the price. People buy your resources, and you send them progression. There are empires who have made tens of millions selling progression. The going rate is anywhere from 40k to 250k for 2 progression points. For comparison purposes, an empire my size pays nearly 1.5 million to buy 2 progression points.

It's a good deal. In any event, I'd encourage you guys to receive some boostage from the larger players. Since we're using the market to send you money, our ability to subsidize you is limited only by gold, not aid slots.


EDIT:

Magic Marauders:
Hills/Coastal
Tundra/Swamp
Coastal/Swamp
Coastal/Tundra
Trade: Get 3 of each of your land type's resources. This is the build you want for those who want to run heavy on the magic, with 30% max mana and 42% regeneration.

Personally, I think it's an extremely bad idea to mix tundra with anything other than another defense land... or at least a stone land. The economic penalty is so bad that you'll be much worse off than if you'd just gone with, say, a stone-stone combo. If you want the bonus resource, get it through trades rather than gimping your economy.

Increasing max mana is of questional value, because regeneration rates aren't related to your total mana pool. In other words, having more mana means that you're waiting longer to use it.

The base regen is 500 seconds per mana point (173 mana points/day). I have a base of 533 mana at 850 progression--three days to fill up a mana bar from empty (actually slightly less since I have double Nightshade).

Putting apprentices into mana apparently improves regen time now. I haven't had a chance to experiment with that yet, though.

[Ganurath]

On Land Choice:

This build is oriented toward maximizing one's magic potential. Four provinces means eight land slots for resources and four trade slots for resources. As such, relying on trades for at least half of one's magic resources is generally ill advised when one plans to rely on magic. Besides, Tundra has the lowest Food penalty of all the non-Food lands at -10%.

On Increased Maximum Magic:

If one plans on casting nonstop, it's easy to understand how it may seem frivilous. However, consider that there is no school of magic that doesn't do something violent. If you're going to go to war, you want to have a large stockpile of mana built up to cast a series of spells to launch a devastating opening offensive.

Edit:

Is there anything stopping someone from continually buying Progression without getting a second province so they can stay in Peace Mode unpenalized while building up armory points to get toward a superunit, then exploding outward out of nowhere in a flood of magical destruction calling forth the Elder Gods of the Swamps to fill the world with blood as per the prophecies of the Tundra dwellers?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Is there anything stopping someone from continually buying Progression without getting a second province so they can stay in Peace Mode unpenalized while building up armory points to get toward a superunit, then exploding outward out of nowhere in a flood of magical destruction calling forth the Elder Gods of the Swamps to fill the world with blood as per the prophecies of the Tundra dwellers?

I dunno. Shall I find out? ;-]

[Kasarn]

As far as I can tell, two provinces with peace mode penalty is better than one province with no penalties.

[Tezkat]

Perma-peace mode carries a penalty of -25% to gold and resource production. A two province hippie empire will have at least double the land capacity, cheaper building/exploration, twice the bonus resources, increased commerce/citizen, and access to spells--easily enough to make up the penalty in the long run.

Remaining near your land cap is suboptimal due to the economics, because progression costs more gold per resource than nearly any empire can produce. If you don't have multiple provinces between which to distribute exploration costs, you'll be perpetually bottlenecked by gold supply.

And you can't build up very quickly. There's a hard cap on exploration speed of 960 land per day per province, assuming you explore both types evenly. Buildings: 288 per building per day per province (plus construction bonuses). Troops: 480 per day per province per unit. Workshop items: 96 per day per unit. Getting my fourth province up to speed is a two-week operation that I still haven't completed.


Thanks to llearch's data, I've got a better idea of what the BaseCommerce projection looks like:

1 province: 4.28 gold/citizen
2 provinces: 5.76 gold/citizen (projected)
3 provinces: 7.24 gold/citizen
4 provinces: 8.71 gold/citizen

Adding provinces increases commerce income substantially.


Also, for the curious... the complete University tree (fully unlocked at 850 progression):

Food Based Technologies 

Fertilizer  +2% 
Rationing  +2% 
Livestock Stockade  +3% 
Basic Irrigation  +1% 
>>  Mono Agriculture  +2% 
>>  Crop Rotation  +5% 
Rudimentary Canals  +3% 
Basic Processing  +2% 
>>  Simple Storage  +3% 
>>  Pickling  +4% 
>>  Pasteurization  +6% 
Plows  +4% 

Wood Based Technologies

Basic Chopping Techniques  +2% 
Processed Wood  +2% 
Dimensional Lumber  +3% 
Forest Management Plans  +1% 
>>  Treeplanting  +2% 
>>  Prescribed Burning  +5% 
Fungus Education  +3% 
Basic Processing  +2% 
>>  Oak Processing  +3% 
>>  Maple Processing  +4% 
>>  Yew Processing  +6% 
Sawmill Development  +4% 

Stone Based Technologies

Soil Erosion Studies  +2% 
Mining Safety Union  +2% 
Basic Smelting  +3% 
Blasting Caps  +1% 
>>  Strip Mining  +2% 
>>  Mining Revolution  +5% 
Deformation Monitoring  +3% 
Basic Geology  +2% 
>>  Sedimentary Rock Studies  +3% 
>>  Igneous Rock Studies  +4% 
>>  Metamorphic Rock Studies  +6% 
Biomineralisation  +4% 

Totals: +37% Food, +37% Wood, +37% Stone


...and a helpful land calculator that someone wrote:

http://thesinkhole.net/games/galava/galavaland.html

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I have someone offering a trade for Seaweed.

Since I've got Elderberry and Seaweed myself, does this mean we both get two Seaweeds? Or does it mean I get to pick one of his things to trade with, and I get the benefit of that, or what?

And is it a good trade?

Edit:
The gentleman in question...

[Kasarn]

Perma-peace mode carries a penalty of -25% to gold and resource production. A two province hippie empire will have at least double the land capacity, cheaper building/exploration, twice the bonus resources, increased commerce/citizen, and access to spells--easily enough to make up the penalty in the long run.

Also, unless I'm missing something, it takes 500 hours (25 / 0.05), or 20 days 20 hours, to reach -25%.

I have someone offering a trade for Seaweed.

Since I've got Elderberry and Seaweed myself, does this mean we both get two Seaweeds? Or does it mean I get to pick one of his things to trade with, and I get the benefit of that, or what?

And is it a good trade?

Edit:
The gentleman in question...

They get access to your seaweed and you will be given a list of what they've got available to trade.
Note that an empire can only trade a resource once; so, if want a specific resource from them, there's a chance it won't be available as they're already trading it.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Hmm. So... I only find out what they have available after I agree to trade?

Seems a bit... questionable.

Also, what are good bonus resources, then? Or, rather, what should I be looking at improving at this stage?

[Tezkat]

Special resources stack up to three times. All bonuses are additive. When you accept, you'll be able to choose from any special resources he has free.

I'd stay away from population buffs (Elderberry, Coal), since food costs too much. Income and commerce buffs are decent. Construction buffs are nice as well, though I like them more for the speed bonus than the cost reduction. Attack and mana bonuses won't help you until you're big enough for more provinces.

What are your choices?


Hmm... since nobody seems interested in free monies, how about I buy some progression?

Put up 50 of anything on the market at 10000 PPU. I buy that. Then you send 2 progression to my empire via financial aid. Since progression costs you guys maybe 5k worth of gold and resources a pop, that's like 490k profitz. Good deal, no?

[Ganurath]

Put up 50 of anything on the market at 10000 PPU. I buy that. Then you send 2 progression to my empire via financial aid. Since progression costs you guys maybe 5k worth of gold and resources a pop, that's like 490k profitz. Good deal, no?

50 Wood up.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Special resources stack up to three times. All bonuses are additive. When you accept, you'll be able to choose from any special resources he has free.

I'd stay away from population buffs (Elderberry, Coal), since food costs too much. Income and commerce buffs are decent. Construction buffs are nice as well, though I like them more for the speed bonus than the cost reduction. Attack and mana bonuses won't help you until you're big enough for more provinces.

What are your choices?

Let me see...

Nightshade, Cherry Wood, Iron Wood, or Iron.

From what you've said, Cherry Wood is probably my best bet...

Hmm... since nobody seems interested in free monies, how about I buy some progression?

Put up 50 of anything on the market at 10000 PPU. I buy that. Then you send 2 progression to my empire via financial aid. Since progression costs you guys maybe 5k worth of gold and resources a pop, that's like 490k profitz. Good deal, no?

I'm limited, because I can only trade 939 market items at a time. Since I've got 150k lying about, it doesn't seem right to suck more money out of you guys yet. ;-]

I've put 50 wood up, as well, though. I'd have done stone, but I seem to be using more of that...

[Tezkat]

Hmm... I'm not seeing any resources from you guys on the market. Did someone else beat me to it?

[Kasarn]

Hmm... I'm not seeing any resources from you guys on the market. Did someone else beat me to it?

Maaaaayyyyybbbbeeeeeee >_>

[Tezkat]

But... but... I want my overpriced progression!

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

S'ok, I can put another 50 up. ;-]

[Ganurath]

S'ok, I can put another 50 up. ;-]

As have I. I want to test a theory I have, and donating 2 progression right now would be a perfect opporunity to test it.

[fisherman]

Hey, send me some prog too http://galava.net/user?id=188

Put up your market offers Ill buy em

thanx!

[Tezkat]

Bought from both of you. By the way... there seems to be a bug that lets you send more than one foreign aid offer a week to the same person.

Not sure how it works, but I know that Laytper was able to send me another batch while his first one was still in transit.