Resource adventures

Ok first off i'm a little new to this game, how ever i been playing settlers a long time and RTS's for almost two decades, so im new to the game not the gene.


Adventures are broken down into two types - XP and RES.


The Res ones need either a buff to the drops or the XP taking off and a huge buff to the drops as atm even running a resoruce adventure the net income is a negative.

Inc math.

Bread@10gc/stack
BSwords@16/stack

Using these figures (ignoring build time+provision house usage time)
A recruit costs 2g to produce
1.6g for the settler 0.4g for the bronze swords.

I will pick "Island of the pirates" typical losses are Losses 549-677 (source linky) so say 600 losses that's the medium, so 1200g costs, add on the cost of the adventure 100-200g, and its 1300-1400g.

Now lets look at the rewards
http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/3...tesrewards.jpg

Breaking even from this loot drop, unless u get very luck is quite a challenge. So why should i run this adventure and get a net loss in gold - when i could just run an XP adventure and accept the net loss for XP?

Slot 1

800 exotic wood - 250g
100 exotic wood - 325g
700 Granite - 670g
900 Granite -870g
Average = 530g

Slot 2

800 hwp -35g
800 marble - 40g

average 37.5g

Slot 3+4
Bswords - 112g
Bows - 126g
Steel swords - 500g
Horses - 100g
Long bows - 175g
iron swords - 500g

average 252g

Slot 5

Beer 12.5g
Bread 12.5g
Sausage 36g
settlers 480g

average 135.25g

Slot 6

iron ore - 100g
wheat - 4g
Meat - 1g
gold ore - 110g

average 54g


Total average reward - 1088g

If you are just buying the goods to make recruits, then perhaps it isn't cost effective. I produce the items needed so my costs are lower. For instance, bread costs me absolutely nothing. My farms have silos which refill the fields, I have watermills, so the water is not costing anything. As to the broadswords production, it does cost me some copper ore. Coal I get from recycleries and cokers. And the cokers use wood, which is a completely renewable resource because of the foresters i use.

but instead of using these resources to make troops you could have sold it - so even if you produced it - the goods still have a intrinsic value

But i do sell it. Best of both worlds. I produce enough to do both. That way i can have fun too. It is after all a game. Having the most gc's is not my idea of winning. GCs are only good for upgrading. There are players who play this like an economy sim, and some who play it like a city-building game, and then some who want it to be a conquer everything game. I try to do some of each.

I'm not sure what level you are but once you start upgrading buildings past lvl 3 you will understand that granite is worth far beyond how much it costs. It can be hard to find granite and for most players it is their limiting factor in being able to upgrade a building from 4-5 (or 3-4 in some cases, or 2-3 in some cases as well). I would say Island of the Pirates is one of the worst examples of a resource adventure and instead adventures like Black Knights or Dark Brotherhood (or Victor since most just do it for xbows) would be a better choice.

There were times when a stack of marble was selling with 30gc, HWP 25, BS 25...and exotic logs were almost 1:1 with gold coins. The economics side of this game evolved in a way that I'm pretty sure was not easy to anticipate.

Quote:

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I would say Island of the Pirates is one of the worst examples of a resource adventure and instead adventures like Black Knights or Dark Brotherhood (or Victor since most just do it for xbows) would be a better choice.

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I think it depends on the resource you're after. As you noted, granite is a valuable commodity. Pirates is an excellent resource adventure for granite, as it'll drop 700 ~ 900 units of granite 50% of the time. And for the losses, (about 400 troops total, 200R, 200B), it's a small-loss, nice yield, adventure. The acquisition costs are low, (you can usually buy it for around 150 coins), and it doesn't take long to complete either. A veteran general and advanced blocking skills are all you really need to knock this thing out quickly.

I don't have all my stats with me at the moment, but I've run this adventure about 30 times in the last month, and it's dropped over 14k granite on me from those runs.

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Originally Posted by Hobknocker

I think it depends on the resource you're after.........but I've run this adventure about 30 times in the last month, and it's dropped over 14k granite on me from those runs.

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30 runs = 40.5k g
14k granite = 14k g

:/

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Originally Posted by Ryuben

30 runs = 40.5k g
14k granite = 14k g

:/

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Check your math. 30 runs at ~ 150 coins/adv = 4,500 coins. Good luck coming CLOSE to 14k granite with 4500 coins. So there's a 10k profit on the FIRST loot spot alone. I didn't track all the prices I paid for the adventure, but they ranged from 100 - 200 coins.

Now that I'm home, I double-checked my spreadsheet. I ran it 35 times and got granite 22 of those times. Total loot received:

Slot 1:
Granite: 16,600
Exotic Logs: 10,800

Slot 2:
Marble: 15,200
HWP: 12,800

Slots 3 & 4:
Steel Swords: 5,000
Longbows: 7,000
Horses: 11,000
Bronze Swords: 18,200
Iron Swords: 14,000
Bows: 16,800

Slot 5:
Beer: 4,000
Sausage: 7,500
Bread: 3,000
Settlers: 1,800

Slot 6:
Wheat Deposit: 5,600
Iron Deposit: 18,000
Motherly Love: 10
Crates: 2
Meat Deposit: 2,800
Gold Deposit: 1,500

Note that I sold the Motherly Love adventures for 200 coins each, for a total of 2,000 coins.

Bad thing about posting all this is that people will probably realize what an excellent resource adventure this is & drive up the price on me! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hobknocker

Check your math. 30 runs at ~ 150 coins/adv = 4,500 coins. Good luck coming CLOSE to 14k granite with 4500 coins. So there's a 10k profit on the FIRST loot spot alone. I didn't track all the prices I paid for the adventure, but they ranged from 100 - 200 coins.

Now that I'm home, I double-checked my spreadsheet. I ran it 35 times and got granite 22 of those times. Total loot received:

Slot 1:
Granite: 16,600
Exotic Logs: 10,800

Slot 2:
Marble: 15,200
HWP: 12,800

Slots 3 & 4:
Steel Swords: 5,000
Longbows: 7,000
Horses: 11,000
Bronze Swords: 18,200
Iron Swords: 14,000
Bows: 16,800

Slot 5:
Beer: 4,000
Sausage: 7,500
Bread: 3,000
Settlers: 1,800

Slot 6:
Wheat Deposit: 5,600
Iron Deposit: 18,000
Motherly Love: 10
Crates: 2
Meat Deposit: 2,800
Gold Deposit: 1,500

Note that I sold the Motherly Love adventures for 200 coins each, for a total of 2,000 coins.

Bad thing about posting all this is that people will probably realize what an excellent resource adventure this is & drive up the price on me! :)

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i was posting the reply regarding the troops lost and the cost therein

Quote:

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i was posting the reply regarding the troops lost and the cost therein

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Gotcha. As I noted, my recruit losses are lower than what you're using, so my recruit costs per your model is around 28k. I'm comfortable that I'm coming out ahead given that I'm over 16k in granite alone, plus 2k more in the Motherly drops. I did some quick math using my current sale prices for the various loot & I'm over 40k in coins for the above list.

Perhaps more than anything, this exercise shows the value of advanced blocking. Even for the throwaway troops like Recruits, you can significantly reduce your losses, and thus the overall "cost" of the adventure.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ryuben

Ok first off i'm a little new to this game, how ever i been playing settlers a long time and RTS's for almost two decades, so im new to the game not the gene.


Adventures are broken down into two types - XP and RES.


The Res ones need either a buff to the drops or the XP taking off and a huge buff to the drops as atm even running a resoruce adventure the net income is a negative.

Inc math.

Bread@10gc/stack
BSwords@16/stack

Using these figures (ignoring build time+provision house usage time)
A recruit costs 2g to produce
1.6g for the settler 0.4g for the bronze swords.

I will pick "Island of the pirates" typical losses are Losses 549-677 (source linky) so say 600 losses that's the medium, so 1200g costs, add on the cost of the adventure 100-200g, and its 1300-1400g.

Now lets look at the rewards
http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/3...tesrewards.jpg

Breaking even from this loot drop, unless u get very luck is quite a challenge. So why should i run this adventure and get a net loss in gold - when i could just run an XP adventure and accept the net loss for XP?

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I agree sometimes you do not get a positive profit from doing adventure. But at least you get something back to compensate for what you have sacrificed for it. I see this pretty fair. When you do a resource adventure, you get both xp and resources. 1200gc to do a pirate run and get 1088gc back as the reward (using you figures) plus 2k xp. So that 2k xp makes up for your 112 gc loss. However, when you do a xp run, you spend your gc to make troops, they never bring you back anything to compensate for the troops. Which one will be more beneficial? Not to mention, if you can get granite (50% of the time), that'll benefit you later with upgrading your buildings (which you won't have if you only do xp run). And if you do make your own bread and weapons, it literally costs you nothing. I don't see the point of doing xp runs just for levels. If you are a level 50 with the most of your buildings being level 4 and below, that'd be worse, imo, than a level 40-45 with level 5 buildings.

Accountants take the fun out of everything.

I'm sure the numbers you have presented are accurate. What I'm still trying to wrap my head around is how you can play the adventure 30 times in approx. 30 days, with losess of 400 each time (12,000 total) and be able to generate so many settlers, in so little time. Am I missing something? Settlers are produced 4 per hour, 96 per day. Without buying gems, how in the world do you produce 400 settlers per day? Do you have a standing army of 50,000 troops, and just add to it when you can. Seriously, what am I missing?

You replace the settlers using bread in your Provision House, on the Resources tab. You can build "stacks" of settlers and store them in your star menu. I have 11k+ settlers in my star menu at the moment; about 150% of my population cap.

And 400 settlers/day is nothing to replace - a level 5 barracks builds 25 in 15 minutes, so 4 hours to replace them. A level 5 PH will build 400 settlers in a bit under 2.5 hours. So it's quite easy to run Pirates 4 or 5+ times/day once your island is well-established. I don't remember the times for level 4 barracks & PH, but they'd still support multiple runs of Pirates/day.