Data: Market versus Ninja

[NinjaElk]

Your spreadsheet seems to assume a 100% tax rate. 100 wealth does not directly translate into 100 gold per turn. The wealth is multiplied by the tax rate to arrive at your gold per turn. So 100 wealth from a Sake Den at a 30% tax rate yields 30 gold per turn.

On the Food Surplus vs. Rice Exchange debate, I think the base mechanics are also being misunderstood. As far as I understand, this is how it works (please correct me if I'm wrong):

1 Food Surplus yields 1 growth clan-wide for all provinces. Each 1 growth increases the town wealth by 1 per turn. Town wealth is then added up from all various factors (farms, buildings, total current growth) then multiplied by the current tax rate to yield gold per turn. For example if my town has a total 1000 composite wealth, at 30% tax rate it generates 300 gold per turn. If it has a 10 growth, then next turn it will be at 1010 composite wealth, and generate 303 gold per turn at a 30% tax rate.

A Rice Exchange yields +5 additional growth over a market, and +300 static wealth to the province once built while costing one food. Whether or not this is worth it depends directly on how many provinces you own. If you have 10 provinces, 1 Food Surplus yields 10 total growth clan-wide, while the Rice Exchange yields only 5. Granted it'd take 10 provinces 60 turns to recoup the static +300 bonus the Rice Exchange gave you for existing. However, you also have to account for the initial 3,150 (before modifiers) initial cost of the Rice Exchange.

When you throw Metsuke into the mix it starts to get complicated. Let's assume a Metsuke grants you +15% tax rate, thus bringing a 30% tax rate to 45% tax rate in a single city, and as in the above example we still have 10 total provinces. This means we're comparing the worth of +300 initial static wealth and +5 growth per turn at a 45% tax rate, to +10 global growth at a largely 30% tax rate.

Now, this is where it gets complicated. 45% taxes produce 50% more gold per turn than 30% taxes (i.e. 100 wealth at 45% rate is 45 gold, 100 wealth at 30% rate is 30 gold. 45 gold is 50% more gold than 30 gold). So, we can assume that +5 growth at 45% is really worth +7.5 growth at 30% tax rate. Because of this phenomenon, the higher your base tax rate, the less effective the static 15% boost from the Metsuke would be.

What does this all mean? In general if you have a lot of provinces you're still probably going to be a lot better off with just Food Surplus. Especially once you get to the point where you have 15-20+ provinces (or more if you're playing Domination) the clan-wide growth just trumps what a Rice Exchange can give you, even with the Metsuke's boost. Also, that frees your Metsukes up to go wreak havoc elsewhere. However, there are situations where the Rice Exchange/Merchant Guild beats out a food surplus, but it'd take a pretty complicated spreadsheet to arrive at the exact Tax Rate, Metsuke skill at overseeing towns, current number of provinces, and bonuses to building cost.

tl;dr
~10+ provinces: Food Surplus > Rice Exchange
<10 provinces: Rice Exchange > Food Surplus

[RedKnight]

Thanks muchly NinjaElk, you've posted a very good analysis. I have learned a lot since I posted that spreadsheet in the distant past Some simple basics are what they are - but then are overlaid by many other things going on.

Another thing to consider is, Administration costs. There is a good thread listing Admin Cost vs number of provinces somewhere, but it escapes me at the moment. I am hoping for a simple rule of thumb of how the number of provinces increase versus the efficacy of metsuke and ninja buildings.

Would you agree that once you reach a certain number of provinces (aka no longer small and/or face Realm Divide), there's no way you would want a Market built into anything higher in the Market line, with the possible exception of, where you'll place maxxed metsuke? If true, it begs the question of whether you should build anything past Market, except for the metsuke provinces, if you know the province will ultimately not be in your top 5 income producers. (Otherwise, why invest the money?) You can go a step further than that and burn down anything higher than a Market in a captured province (and replace it with a Market), if it's not in your top 5 producers...

Related to this, would you agree that the Market line, even if kept to a simple Market, is better than the ninja line of buildings, assuming you only have one slot in a province? After having 5 of any type of agent you want or need.


It's all pretty complicated and overlaps a lot. But there are a lot of smart people here who see things that I haven't.

TW rocks. Thanks! - RK

[Stratege]

When I look at RotS it seems so the devs do not believe in the vanilla economic system concerning food as well any longer. In RotS there is a market line that gives additional food instead of costing food.

I only wish they would change this in vanilla. I do not like that apart from some provinces that serve as recruitment centres upgrading castles and markets just kills income you would otherwise get in the long run. And there is no way to downgrade castles if the AI has upgraded them too much.

[Sp4]

A friend of mine recently did some extensive maths on the subject, or wants to anyways. He says market chain is awesome for growth and if you can maintain it, give a very high income in the long run.