Where to build markets - only in fertile lands?

In my first campaign i built lots of markets, why not, the tree generates lots of wealth.

However the -2 food penalty caused many provinces to starve so i had to destroy my very expensive investments.

This did not make me happy.

So I found this map at TWcentre:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/attac...4&d=1300847863

Playing as the Shimazu, with the intention of taking Kyushu, does it only make sense to build markets in Higo, Hizen and Tsukushi, as they are the only provinces fertile enough to feed their population [and] have a fully upgraded market complex?

p.s. Does it not seem odd that Hyuga, which specialises in farming, is also a barren province?

Cheers

AFAIK, the fertility doesn't affect the amount of food the province produces, only the income from farming. The 4 levels of farming always give you 1-4 units of food. You'll just have to leave some castle towns as forts and only build an upgraded market there, no troop production. Specialize the regions a bit, like in civ.

To clarify, it's when the global food goes below 0 that people become unruly.

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Originally Posted by Dead Guy

AFAIK, the fertility doesn't affect the amount of food the province produces, only the income from farming. The 4 levels of farming always give you 1-4 units of food. You'll just have to leave some castle towns as forts and only build an upgraded market there, no troop production. Specialize the regions a bit, like in civ.

To clarify, it's when the global food goes below 0 that people become unruly.

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i don't like it, i want to max out a tree if i go to the trouble of investing in it. :(

so why do some provinces complain about lack of food and not others, considering both have the first stone castle and the -2 market upgrade?

"global", as in for my clan........?

cheers

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Originally Posted by Furunculus

p.s. Does it not seem odd that Hyuga, which specialises in farming, is also a barren province?

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From your link, a province with farming specialisation means you can build an extra level of irrigation on its farms, presumably creating +5 food in that province.

I think Dead guy is right that food is based on the development level of your farms (i.e. 1 to 4), rather than the fertility of the soil -which governs the financial output of the farms.

You do at some point have to weigh up where your food will be distributed and how -essentially: castles or markets?

I don't think that a focus on self sustaining provinces is going to be the most productive/performing. Tuning a system of recruitment/trader and feeder provinces is surely the way to go. Higher level castles bring greater benefits as recruitment centres but also stronger defensive positions (if only mainly by spawning dedicated defensive units when besieged). As for markets/rice traders/merchants guilds they add a bonus to a region's trade, so its clear they should be built in your trading centres.

I guess the next logical (or meticulous/analy retentive) thing is to plan your conquests and developement around how much food you will have available from your target provinces. This way you can share out castle and market development with a little coordinated forethought, a bit like the old trick from civ4 of planning city placement around the "fat cross" and what resources/features will be included.

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Originally Posted by Furunculus

p.s. Does it not seem odd that Hyuga, which specialises in farming, is also a barren province?

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You'd have to be a specialised farmer to produce crops on barren land ;)

The easiest first:

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Originally Posted by Furunculus

"global", as in for my clan........?

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yes.

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Originally Posted by Furunculus

so why do some provinces complain about lack of food and not others, considering both have the first stone castle and the -2 market upgrade?

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Did you check the unrest before your food supply went throught he floor? It's possible food shortages add global/faction wide unhappyness factor. So your most unruly provinces are the most likely to complain/revolt under food shortages.

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Originally Posted by Furunculus

i don't like it, i want to max out a tree if i go to the trouble of investing in it. :(

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Embrace it! Tough decisions are what make the game challenging and interesting. You can squeeze more repeat campaigns out of different approaches too :)

cheers both. :)

That's precisely how I've understood things work.

Furunculus: Global as in your clan yeah. As for which region gets hit, I'm not sure. For me it was always one where the local food supply was negative. That's ok as long as the global is above 0, but not when the global is negative.

I basically have two region modes.

1. Farm + Market only. Relatively low investment - High economic return.

2. Castle, Dojos and encampment/smith/lodge/proving grounds only. This is best on borders obviously, since it not only gives you excellent recruitment capability, but also insane levels of replenishment, in addition to the free garrison and defenses in the event of a siege.

I deviate from this standard in the province I use as my ninja-farm, i.e. a region with ninja clans. And this might not be feasable early in the campaign when you have three regions obviously.

Gah! Ninja'd! How apropos :p

many thanks.

Speaking of which, is it possible to set the taxation differing from one povince to another or do we have only a global slider for that ?

Taxation is global, but I note there is an option for "auto-manage taxes." Don't know if that triggers individual rates for provinces or not. And of course you can always turn off taxation for individual provinces.

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Originally Posted by Dead Guy

Furunculus: Global as in your clan yeah. As for which region gets hit, I'm not sure. For me it was always one where the local food supply was negative. That's ok as long as the global is above 0, but not when the global is negative.

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is there a tool tip that shows you what your net food value is for your clan territories, so you have an idea of whether you can afford to build a market in a particular territory?

The global food is given in the bottom right of the GUI I think. There's a little bag of rice with a number beneath it, IIRC.

You can find the local food supply in the menu you get when double-clicking a castle town, I think it's in the top right part...

many thanks.

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...e-for-Shogun-2

This is a really good guide to understanding/managing your economy and happiness. I feel I understand it a lot better having read it, although still fuzzy on growth.

I think there are a lot of misconceptions in this thread, resulting from the really counter-intuitive (and I'd say downright stupid) way CA set up the economy in this game. You should basically never, ever build Rice Exchanges or any of the other Market upgrades. Fortress upgrades should be pretty rare as well, but as necessary for training spots/chokehold provinces. Whenever you capture a province that won't be one of those, you should tear down the Sword School or Yari Drill Yard or whatever the AI put there and just build a Market. Since you can't downgrade fortresses, add in Sake Dens or Buddhist Temples as necessary.

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Originally Posted by xploring

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...e-for-Shogun-2

This is a really good guide to understanding/managing your economy and happiness. I feel I understand it a lot better having read it, although still fuzzy on growth.

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Town Growth comes from a variety of factors:

1. Buildings like Market and Harbour and road upgrades provide town growth. This enhances the town wealth every turn.

2. Some Chi arts provide town growth.

3. Global Food Surplus is the most important source of town growth. Your Global Food Surplus provides a +town growth bonus in every single province, equal to the amount of the surplus. Which is why you should never, ever build a Rice Exchange, nor upgrade a fortress if you can afford not to.

Never upgrading a market is a bit extreme if you do the maths. The market chain food costs is capped at 2 for a structure that adds (at the top end) 2000 to wealth from commerce, or, at 25% tax rate, 500 per turn, in addition to increasing town growth. If you took the 2 food and added that to town growth for a 10 province empire, getting an extra 500 per turn is going to take 2000 increase in town wealth, or 200 per province, which is 100 turns. Not exactly the best use of food, especially since we're discounting town wealth bonus from the market chain.

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Originally Posted by MCM

3. Global Food Surplus is the most important source of town growth. Your Global Food Surplus provides a +town growth bonus in every single province, equal to the amount of the surplus. Which is why you should never, ever build a Rice Exchange, nor upgrade a fortress if you can afford not to.

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I'd like to question the most important part.
There are some factors you need to consider. In order to have anything more than 2-3 food surplus and still be able to ward off your enemies in every direction you'll need a big number of provinces, some with big food consuming castles.
Assuming you have 40 provinces, 1 food surplus would give you total of 40 town wealth per turn divided over all those provinces, slightly reduced by tax level. For this effect to become better than upgrading a market you'd need to give it a number of turns. so it really becomes a trade off between how fast you want the money, and it's actually better to have some provinces making much more income than others so that you can place your Metsukes there increasing tax rate.
It's true that at some point in the game you will probably end up with a large food surplus thus it becoming the largest single source of town growth, but by any means it is not the most important.

I rest my case.

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Originally Posted by quadalpha

Never upgrading a market is a bit extreme if you do the maths. The market chain food costs is capped at 2 for a structure that adds (at the top end) 2000 to wealth from commerce, or, at 25% tax rate, 500 per turn, in addition to increasing town growth. If you took the 2 food and added that to town growth for a 10 province empire, getting an extra 500 per turn is going to take 2000 increase in town wealth, or 200 per province, which is 100 turns. Not exactly the best use of food, especially since we're discounting town wealth bonus from the market chain.

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Assuming you don't conquer any additional provinces in 100 turns, yes. The more provinces you have, the faster Market upgrades become bad. Even the shortest campaigns require 25 provinces to win. If you're in normal or longer campaign, it's going to hurt you more and more to upgrade Markets.

And yes, we didn't take into account the growth values from Market upgrades. But they aren't even as good as listed - Market->Rice Exchange isn't really +5->+10, it's +5->+9, because of the -1 Food Supply. Further, we didn't take into account:

1. The cost of actually building the Market upgrades, or the time it takes you to get that money back on your investment (further narrowing the profitability window on upgrades)
2. What you could do with the troops you could have recruited with that money (which is conquer an additional province and make the Market upgrades even worse)
3. The opporuntity cost of researching Market upgrades instead of other arts, whether Chi or Bushido.

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Originally Posted by Zarky

I'd like to question the most important part.
There are some factors you need to consider. In order to have anything more than 2-3 food surplus and still be able to ward off your enemies in every direction you'll need a big number of provinces, some with big food consuming castles.
Assuming you have 40 provinces, 1 food surplus would give you total of 40 town wealth per turn divided over all those provinces, slightly reduced by tax level. For this effect to become better than upgrading a market you'd need to give it a number of turns. so it really becomes a trade off between how fast you want the money, and it's actually better to have some provinces making much more income than others so that you can place your Metsukes there increasing tax rate.
It's true that at some point in the game you will probably end up with a large food surplus thus it becoming the largest single source of town growth, but by any means it is not the most important.

I rest my case.

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If I had 40 provinces I would probably have something like a 60 food surplus. Having played a few campaigns without building any Market upgrades whatsoever, I easily have a +15 food surplus at around 20 provinces, and that's with hardly any farm upgrades, as well as the odd captured Castle or Stronghold. Upgrading the fortress in any more than 1-2 provinces is also a mistake.

+15 town growth from Global Food Surplus is more than any other source of town growth. And that's holding less than 25% of the map. As the game goes on, the advantage of the food surplus will only stack higher and higher, especially if I researched better farms.

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Originally Posted by MCM

If I had 40 provinces I would probably have something like a 60 food surplus. Having played a few campaigns without building any Market upgrades whatsoever, I easily have a +15 food surplus at around 20 provinces, and that's with hardly any farm upgrades, as well as the odd captured Castle or Stronghold. Upgrading the fortress in any more than 1-2 provinces is also a mistake.

+15 town growth from Global Food Surplus is more than any other source of town growth. And that's holding less than 25% of the map. As the game goes on, the advantage of the food surplus will only stack higher and higher, especially if I researched better farms.

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Having 60 food surplus AND functioning samurai army is impossible. I leave about 50% of all castles without upgrades, just the 1 market, sake den or what ever caters to the province specialty. I too have +15 food surplus at around 20 provinces, but after turns pass you capture provinces that have negative food balance and you have to upgrade castles to get experienced/upgraded samurai fast.
My point is, there is a tipping point after certain amount of provinces. After that point, preparing for realm divide and ensuing madness, you lose all your food surplus. I've been to negative food with less than 30 provinces, with less than 4 upgraded markets. I'm not saying that I've perfected this part of the game, I'm just saying that food surplus isn't there at start, and it won't be there at the end.

I have two questions. Great thread, BTW.

One, if fertility is meaningless, why have it in? I might be mistaken in my reading in this thread. Does better fertility confer an economic bonus of some kind?

Two, doesn't global food surplus = stability in provinces, meaning that the ppl are happier and less likely to revolt?

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Originally Posted by Zarky

Having 60 food surplus AND functioning samurai army is impossible. I leave about 50% of all castles without upgrades, just the 1 market, sake den or what ever caters to the province specialty. I too have +15 food surplus at around 20 provinces, but after turns pass you capture provinces that have negative food balance and you have to upgrade castles to get experienced/upgraded samurai fast.
My point is, there is a tipping point after certain amount of provinces. After that point, preparing for realm divide and ensuing madness, you lose all your food surplus. I've been to negative food with less than 30 provinces, with less than 4 upgraded markets. I'm not saying that I've perfected this part of the game, I'm just saying that food surplus isn't there at start, and it won't be there at the end.

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What does this have to do with upgrading Markets? Upgrading castles is a question of spending money/food on military. Upgrading markets is a question of money/food for money. This sounds like an argument against upgrading Markets, that you think you need to food for Castle upgrades. Fine, that's all the less reason to upgrade Markets. You have better things to use the food and gold on.

But this is not an argument in favor of upgrading Markets. The Global Town Growth factor is the same whether you are at 0 food or 60 food. It is a marginal change every time you decide to upgrade a Market.

Just looking at your example, if you had "less than 4 upgraded markets" and were at -2 food... you would have been at +1 food if you had upgraded ZERO markets!

If I am at TWO FOOD, whether or not I upgrade a Market is the same maths question if I am at two hundred food. It is spending X gold to get Y wealth and lose Z town growth. How much you have had to upgrade your castles is irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Naughtius Maximus

I have two questions. Great thread, BTW.

One, if fertility is meaningless, why have it in? I might be mistaken in my reading in this thread. Does better fertility confer an economic bonus of some kind?

Two, doesn't global food surplus = stability in provinces, meaning that the ppl are happier and less likely to revolt?

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1. Fertility is the base Wealth of the farms. It doesn't relate to +food production, it actually just provides a flat amount for you to tax.

2. Global Food Surplus = growth, not stability, UNLESS your Global Food is NEGATIVE, then it does cause unrest (and possibly revolt) in the provinces that are causing the negative. (It's ok if a province is negative as long as it is balanced out somewhere else by a positive province. If you click the provinces tab under the minimap, you can see each province's individual contribution.)

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Originally Posted by MCM

What does this have to do with upgrading Markets? Upgrading castles is a question of spending money/food on military. Upgrading markets is a question of money/food for money. This sounds like an argument against upgrading Markets, that you think you need to food for Castle upgrades. Fine, that's all the less reason to upgrade Markets. You have better things to use the food and gold on.

But this is not an argument in favor of upgrading Markets. The Global Town Growth factor is the same whether you are at 0 food or 60 food. It is a marginal change every time you decide to upgrade a Market.

Just looking at your example, if you had "less than 4 upgraded markets" and were at -2 food... you would have been at +1 food if you had upgraded ZERO markets!

If I am at TWO FOOD, whether or not I upgrade a Market is the same maths question if I am at two hundred food. It is spending X gold to get Y wealth and lose Z town growth. How much you have had to upgrade your castles is irrelevant.

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The point of my post wasn't pro-castle or pro-market, my point was summarized in the last phrase: Most likely you'll end up with very little food surplus. It's true that I went to negative food and would have been at positive if I hadn't upgraded markets, but on the other hand this was largely because of my rapid expansion west as Takeda, to provinces with rice exchanges (that I destroyed) and huge castles.

"Don't ever upgrade markets" is just as foolish order as "always upgrade markets."

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Originally Posted by Zarky

The point of my post wasn't pro-castle or pro-market, my point was summarized in the last phrase: Most likely you'll end up with very little food surplus. It's true that I went to negative food and would have been at positive if I hadn't upgraded markets, but on the other hand this was largely because of my rapid expansion west as Takeda, to provinces with rice exchanges (that I destroyed) and huge castles.

"Don't ever upgrade markets" is just as foolish order as "always upgrade markets."

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If you don't end up with a food surplus (and have upgraded some markets) does that not mean that you would be having a surplus if you would not have upgraded the markets?

I did not really think about this before, but this thread really put it in perspective. I think it might very well be a good idea to not build the rice exchanges if you get enough provinces so the growth from farms outstrips the growth bonus from the market.

I do suspect that a good tactic might be a mix, and perhaps even one where you scrap some rice exchanges later in the game when you get more provinces.

Perhaps the rice exchange+ buildings need another balancing factor? What if you linked their growth to your global food surplus, so that having some market upgrades and some surplus food would be favorable? Like for instance, rice exchange would give growth equal to your surplus food on top of a fixed growth bonus?

Or, the growth bonus from surplus food should be limited to some fixed amount, or perhaps it could reduce the growth factor in steps (e.g. first 5 surplus gives 5 growth, next 10 surplus gives only 5, the next 20 would give 5 more etc.)

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Originally Posted by Rothe

If you don't end up with a food surplus (and have upgraded some markets) does that not mean that you would be having a surplus if you would not have upgraded the markets?

Perhaps the rice exchange+ buildings need another balancing factor? What if you linked their growth to your global food surplus, so that having some market upgrades and some surplus food would be favorable? Like for instance, rice exchange would give growth equal to your surplus food on top of a fixed growth bonus?

Or, the growth bonus from surplus food should be limited to some fixed amount, or perhaps it could reduce the growth factor in steps (e.g. first 5 surplus gives 5 growth, next 10 surplus gives only 5, the next 20 would give 5 more etc.)

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If you end up with no food surplus and have upgraded some markets, your food surplus without upgrading markets would only be some food. The 1 food a market consumes causes -1 town growth*number of provinces, unless your number of provinces is very very high, in the duration of the game you won't earn more from having 1 extra food than you would from building that rice exchange.

All in all I believe it's smarter to build rice exchanges than not. But mixing is the right way to go, you don't spend all your food surplus on rice exchanges, but you should still build rice exchanges.

Scrapping rice exchanges later on would be a rather terrible idea, because a number of turns has already passed and you've spent money on building those rice exchanges.

I do believe the bonus gained from food surplus is out of balance, maybe 0.5 town growth per food would be better, or your suggestion. There should also be some sort of happiness penalty or other for storing that much food. The point would be that your people aren't hungry, but discontent because they could have more food than they're given.

The event bountiful harvest (or something like that) is also slightly unbalanced, because there is no incentive to spread the food to your people unless you're hurting for population happiness across all regions.

So here's the actual math on upgrading Market->Rice Exchange

Costs 1600 gold
Adds +300 wealth (beyond Market)
Takes 5 turns to build

Also:

Adds +5 town growth/turn (beyond Market)
Subtracts 1 town growth/turn from every Province

So the overall town growth is completely even if you have 5 Provinces. 5 provinces is really small; basically the minimum you need to start fighting your real battles (Shikoku, the Chosokabe starting island, is 5 provinces.) Also, at 5 provinces you probably don't even have the tech to build Rice Exchanges yet, or 1600 spare gold to build a Rice Exchange. Let's go with 10 Provinces. Still not much, you have a long way to go to win the game, even on Short campaign. But at least at 10 provinces, you can definitely be deciding, "Should I invest more in econ, or build more troops?"

So we have 10 provinces. Next, let's just look at the costs of the Rice Exchange itself, forgetting all that complicated town growth stuff.

+300 wealth * .25 tax rate = 75 gold per turn
1600 gold to build / 75 gold per turn = 21.3 turns to pay off
21.3 + 5 to build = profit 27 turns later (Rounded up, since after 26 turns, you have still lost money. After 27 turns, you have turned a profit!)

Wow, that's... pretty bad. And that's with no town growth penalty at all! (Or, basically, having 5 provinces. If you have 5 provinces for 20+ turns... you are probably not going to win the game. :))

So let's look at it with town growth on 10 provinces.

10 provinces mean you are losing 5 town wealth per turn, since +5 growth in the Rice Exchange province is counteracted by -1 growth in every province. So even on the very first turn of our Rice Exchange's life, we don't really have +300 town wealth. We are at +295 town wealth, decreasing 5 per turn, and we paid 1600 for this privilege.

So what does that mean for our Return On Investment (ROI) on the Rice Exchange?

It means that not only does it take more than 27 turns to make a profit, it means that building a Rice Exchange LOSES money, and DOESN'T gain you money. Every town will be just a little bit smaller, and that smallness will add up to much more than the +300 gained.

I made a little spreadsheet, since you have to calculate how much town growth you have at any given time, and how much you have lost, and how much the previous town growth gets you since that changes every turn.

To sum it up, if you have 10 provinces, and you build a Rice Exchange, you do not get your money back until 34 turns later. Your investment peaks at turns 64 and 65, where you have profited 612 gold overall. After that, the overall money you have gained from the Rice Exchange decreases. The Rice Exchange turns negative around turn 95 or so. Yes, that means that building it has overall COST you money. With 10 provinces only, on turn 95, ~24 years later, you would have more money if you had never built it in the first place.

Does anyone else realize how incredibly bad that is? It only accelerates as you conquer more provinces. Let's say I conquer kind of slow, but conquer 1 more province every 4 turns (ie, 1 province per year), going to 11 provinces at turn 6, going to 12 provinces on turn 10, etc. This is probably too slow to win on Short, and definitely too slow to win on Domination, since we're talking about already having 10 provinces, and then only getting 1 more per year. It might be enough time to win on Normal speed. But we know that more provinces is worse for Rice Exchange, so conquering slower is actually better (which should be a huge blinking warning sign that THIS IS A BROKEN BUILDING.)

Anyway, what happens if I am actually conquering provinces over time?

Well, for every additional province, I am now losing 1 more town growth per turn that I would have had. This continues to snowball over time.

It means that a Rice Exchange never pays for its initial 1600 gold investment.

Never.

Ever.

It means that even on a Short Campaign, a Rice Exchange is a total black hole for money. The longer your campaign goes on, the worse it is. The faster you conquer, the worse it is. This is why I say: never build a Rice Exchange, ever.

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...e-Market-Chain

There is a very detailed analysis of the economics of the market chain in the link above. The author made a simple error early on in his calculation, but he has said he will correct it soon, so maybe check back later on if interested.

(I haven't gone through it yet though.)