Metsuke's Town Management

From limited experience I think there is a very simple linear relationship between Metsuke's stars in Town Management versus their bonus in base tax rate:

Agent (Metsuke) Bonus = 5% x Town Management Level

For example, if a Metsuke has 6 stars in Town Management, he brings 5% x 6 = 30% extra tax to the province that he supervises. But this bonus is subject to Administration cost, which is related to the number of provinces we have.

For example, at 10 provinces, the admin cost is 36.9%. This means that the above Metsuke only brings a bonus tax rate of 30% x (1-36.9%) = 18.9%.

If this Metsuke is stationed in a province that produces 3000 koku per turn, he in effect makes a profit of 3000 x 18.9% = 568 koku, which is really not bad.

Metsuke's Specialization

Since Metsuke could potentially makes us a lot of money, it is a good idea to make very specialized Metsuke just for town management. We can quickly build Metsuke into a very good town manager, thanks to their early access to Town Management in their skill tree. There are also retainers that affects Town Management by +1. Below we have a list of the maximal attainable Town Management by Metsuke's level.

1-star Metsuke: max. Lv 1 in Town Management (1 basic)
2-star Metsuke: max. Lv 4 in Town Management (2 basic, 1 skill, 1 retainer)
3-star Metsuke: max. Lv 6 in Town Management (3 basic, 2 skill, 1 retainer)
4-star Metsuke: max. Lv 11 in Town Management (4 basic, 5 skill, 2 retainers)
5-star Metsuke: max. Lv 12 in Town Management (5 basic, 5 skill, 2 retainers)
6-star Metsuke: max. Lv 14 in Town Management (6 basic, 5 skill, 3 retainers)

Since we have obtained data on the relationship of Admin Cost and number of provinces, we can easily plot Metsuke's effectiveness (extra % of tax rate) vs. number of provinces.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attac...1&d=1332551286

Let's see how to read this graph. If we have a level-4 Metsuke with 11 stars in Town Management, at 21 provines they bring us 28.4% extra effective tax rate in the province they supervise.

Here is a real example:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attac...7&d=1332504240

This provinces generates 5591 koku per season. With a level-4 Metsuke with 11 stars in Town Management, at 21 provinces, they should bring me 28.4% extra tax rate. Let's see if it is true!

28.4% x 5591 = 1588
Now in-game number tells us that we make (2776-1186) = 1590

The chart actually works! Woohoo! We can blame the minor discrepancies on round up/downs.

Practical Applications

(1) It is easy to get a level 3 Metsuke and train him to level 4. Find a province that has school (Tsukushi, Settsu, Suruga etc.) Upgrade the school, not along the "increase research path", but along the "level 3 Metsuke path". Hire all your Metsukes from it. With luck or persistence, you can get the right retainer (Yakuza, etc.) Throw them into some rich province!

(2) Deposit all but one of your level 3 Metsukes. Find a good source of enemy agents (such as Kyoto) and use the free Metsuke to arrest the target agent as soon as they are visible. Only four successful arrests is needed to promote a Metsuke from level 3 to level 4.

(3) With high-level markets, such as a Merchant Guild, and a strong food surplus, it is possible to see very rich provinces that generates wealth well over 5000. Along with a leve 4 Metsuke, we should be able to earn more than 2000 koku from those provinces per season! Now finally we have something comparable to the Chinese silk trade node (which earns 1500-3500 per season depending on trade situations)!

But trade nodes bring the full profit almost immediately; it will take a long time for a province to reach 10000+ wealth. :sweatdrop:

Thanks for the info.

I have one question though:

I was under the impression that the effective level for any skill was capped at 10. Have you verified that it is not so? The implications are interesting for both Metsuke and other characters.

I have not trained a level 6 town mangement Metsuke. In the above screen shot, you can see that the level 4 Metsuke (11 stars in town management) provides 55% of tax bonus (another 5% comes from the financial commissioner), making up a total of 60%.

However, I cannot use it as a proof as I formed my "5% per star" hypothesis on the assumption that the 11 stars does function as 11 stars, not 10. If you find any further evidence, please let us know!

Maltz do you come up with this stuff yourself or is someone saying like hey Maltz, go figure out how this affects that?

I was just curious and took a look at it.
I hate qualitative in-game descriptions like "instills fear in enemy". How much fear? 1 point or 10 point? Those things do not help us decide whether an option is better than the other. :dizzy2:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maltz

I have not trained a level 6 town mangement Metsuke. In the above screen shot, you can see that the level 4 Metsuke (11 stars in town management) provides 55% of tax bonus (another 5% comes from the financial commissioner), making up a total of 60%.

However, I cannot use it as a proof as I formed my "5% per star" hypothesis on the assumption that the 11 stars does function as 11 stars, not 10. If you find any further evidence, please let us know!

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My assumption comes from ninja, as I've never managed to train a rank 6 metsuke either, but, iirc, I observed their skill probabilities didn't seem to increase if taken beyond 10 stars.

I might be wrong as I started avoiding increasing any skill beyond 10, and there is no garantee that ninja and metsuke skill work on the same principles, it just seemed logical it would be so...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maltz

I was just curious and took a look at it.
I hate qualitative in-game descriptions like "instills fear in enemy". How much fear? 1 point or 10 point? Those things do not help us decide whether an option is better than the other. :dizzy2:

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Fair point =)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Narcisista

My assumption comes from ninja, as I've never managed to train a rank 6 metsuke either, but, iirc, I observed their skill probabilities didn't seem to increase if taken beyond 10 stars.

I might be wrong as I started avoiding increasing any skill beyond 10, and there is no garantee that ninja and metsuke skill work on the same principles, it just seemed logical it would be so...

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I remember seeing people posting the success rates of Ninja with different number of stars in assassination.
The relationship is not linear. At very high levels, the success chance may only increase by 1-2% for an additional star. So it is possible that the additional success rate from 10 stars to 11 stars become so little that it can be ignored.

Keep in mind, though, that a % increase in tax and a % chance to succeed out of a 100 behave differently.

Increasing income bonus from 50% to 55%, and then from 55% to 60% is just a linear increase, giving the same benefit for each step (at an income of a 100, the stages would be 150, 155 and 160, each star providing exactly 5 additional income). Increasing chance to succeed in assassinations from 90% to 95% and then from 95% to 98% is a vastly different thing, as the first cuts our risk of failure from 10% to 5% - or halves it - and the second one from 5% to 2% - which cuts it to 2/5 the risk of before. The last 3 percentage points are worth more than the previous 5.

Not to derail the thread, though, I'd like to also mention the greatness of the latest patch's increase in town-stationed agent's xp/turn from 1 to 3. This is actually pretty significant in the early stages of the game as a Metsuke hired in turns 5 or so now hit rank 2 after just 7 turns as opposed to 20. As rank 2 can give them 2 additional town management skill on top of their innate extra from ranking and since administration cost is very low when you're low in provinces, this makes early Metsuke significantly more efficient to get and that in itself makes r4+ Metsuke easier to get in the later stages of the game. Still not a Silk node - but I'll take it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jarmam

Increasing chance to succeed in assassinations from 90% to 95% and then from 95% to 98% is a vastly different thing, as the first cuts our risk of failure from 10% to 5% - or halves it - and the second one from 5% to 2% - which cuts it to 2/5 the risk of before. The last 3 percentage points are worth more than the previous 5.

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I didn't test it, but I'm sure it is calculated so: stars/(stars+negative factors(including units, rank of the target))

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jarmam

Not to derail the thread, though, I'd like to also mention the greatness of the latest patch's increase in town-stationed agent's xp/turn from 1 to 3. This is actually pretty significant in the early stages of the game as a Metsuke hired in turns 5 or so now hit rank 2 after just 7 turns as opposed to 20. As rank 2 can give them 2 additional town management skill on top of their innate extra from ranking and since administration cost is very low when you're low in provinces, this makes early Metsuke significantly more efficient to get and that in itself makes r4+ Metsuke easier to get in the later stages of the game. Still not a Silk node - but I'll take it.

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It's big.

In Vanilla I still haven't managed to get a rank 6 metsuke, but rank 5 are now easily reachable. It is also more atractive to use ninja to establish spy networks or parking a monk in the namban trade province.

In ROTS I also noticed a marked difference in shirabyoshi leveling.

Since Junsatsuchi are the Metsuke equivalent in ROTS it is also worth noticing this change makes them arguably overpowered, because in my experience they seem to keep levelling everytime they are spreading influence. I still need to confirm this.

http://ccc-ccc.ca/tmp/temp_2012/stw2/date/date_341.jpg

Here is a screenshot of lv 6 Metsuke in action.

I was probably wrong to assume that the highest level of town management (overseeing towns) is 14 - it might be 13. The retainers cannot be identical (used to be fine, maybe the patch fixed it). Since there are only two kinds of retainers that provide +1 level to town management, the most tax bonus is 13 x 5% = 65% - further subject to the admin rate.

What was the tax bonus for the Finance Commissioner? Any other character with a clan wide tax bonus?

Finance commissioner gives 1% extra tax per star command. I am not aware of about other characters who give the clan-wide tax bonus.

There might be a few retainers who do, but I'm not sure about it or if they are not Daimyo only if they even exist.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Narcisista

It's big.

In Vanilla I still haven't managed to get a rank 6 metsuke, but rank 5 are now easily reachable. It is also more atractive to use ninja to establish spy networks or parking a monk in the namban trade province.

In ROTS I also noticed a marked difference in shirabyoshi leveling.

Since Junsatsuchi are the Metsuke equivalent in ROTS it is also worth noticing this change makes them arguably overpowered, because in my experience they seem to keep levelling everytime they are spreading influence. I still need to confirm this.

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In RotS, Junatsuchi do earn passive experience for conversion which has also received the bump to 3 points per turn. I don't know whether they're OP though as their influence peddling is pretty important and that keeps them busy outside towns for significant stretches where they're not boosting tax. The max overseer bonus from skills alone is +4 (vs +5 for metsuke) and it runs down the same side of the tree as spreading influence, so you're steered towards using the same agents for both jobs. There's also (theoretically) higher risk for them than metsuke as there are more counter agents running around that can remove them in RotS. (less of them being shinobi types) Seems somewhat balanced and all agents get the same passive skills increase.

Question about metsuke traits: I'm getting a lot of 'self interested' metsuke since the March patch. That trait says "-1 to farming wealth wherever he's present". Does that actually work? And -1 what? One farming wealth level? That would be significant and an irritatingly nice counterweight to the ease with which you can generate metstuke uber governers, presuming it functions as intended. I see no UI indication that it's working though.