Where to build markets - only in fertile lands?

[Furunculus]

many thanks.

[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.

[MCM]

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.

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.

[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.

[MCM]

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.

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.

[Zarky]

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.

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.

[MCM]

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.

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.

[Zarky]

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.

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.

[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?

[MCM]

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.

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.