Upgrade Market to Rice Exchange? An objective analysis

[Maltz]

Now we can make some charts! (And they are now updated to remove errors and improve accuracy!)

But since there are two many variables, we have to fix the others and only examine one or two at a time.
First, let's look at the effect of number of provinces.
We will reasonably assume the following:

Base Tax Rate (BT%) = 30%
Number of Provinces (P) = 22, 16, 10
Number of Turns (T) = 1 to 100

With Good Metsuke:
Effective Tax Rate (ET%) = 32% (22 provinces), 34% (16 provinces), 36% (10 provinces)
Average Effective Tax Rate (ET-AVE%) = 20% (22 provinces), 22% (16 provinces), 24% (10 provinces)
Reduction of Sum of Town Growth from Base Tax Rate (RS) = 0.26



Chart 1 - Metsuke in the Province

The precense of Metsuke boosts the income of the province in which he is stationed.

Let's take the green line (16 provinces) for discussion. The initial deficit of 1500 (the cost of the Rice Exchange building) will slowly pay off. At about turn 17, the Rice Exchange option breaks even with the no upgrade option (which means they make the same amount of money).

From then on, they earn more profit over Market alone, but this extra from Rice Exchange max off at turn 58 or so at about 1400 koku (which is not a lot, really), and slowly head to deficit that goes deeper and deepr due to the loss of long-term town growth. After turn 95 or so, Rice Exchange actually makes less money than market alone. We still make money, just not as much as if we leave Market in the basic form.

As we have more provinces (the red line), the benefit of town growth is more pronounced. At 22 provinces (the magic number to pause before Realm Divide on Domination campaign), the extra profit of the Rice Exchange is only positive between turn 20 and 60, and the extra profit is just several hundred koku at best.

But if we have less provinces (the orange line, 10 provinces), upgrading to Rice Exchange sounds like a great idea when we put a good Metsuke there. The extra profit beats the alternative for a long time. However, by staying small, we already lose income from collecting less tax from additional provinces in the first place. So why would we purposely stay small?

[Maltz]

I guess most people's question on Rice Exchange is on whether we should upgrade Markets in all provinces. But obviously we at most can only have 5 Metsuke supervising towns. So most provinces would be without a Metsuke. Let's look at the no metsuke situation.

Base Tax Rate (BT%) = 30%
Number of Provinces (P) = 22, 16, 10
Number of Turns (T) = 1 to 100

Effective Tax Rate (ET%) = 20% (22 provinces), 22% (16 provinces), 24% (10 provinces)
Average Effective Tax Rate (ET-AVE%) = 20% (22 provinces), 22% (16 provinces), 24% (10 provinces)



Chart 2 - No Metsuke in the Province

Without Metsuke, the extra commerce offered by Rice Exchange is subject to the regular 20% effective tax rate in the province. And we have a very surprising result: Rice Exchange does not turn ANY extra profit after we grow reasonably large.

Extra profit we make at the 10 province case is also very small. It is a very questionable decision to lose 1500 koku now only to gain that same extra koku back 80+ seasons later. Think of what you can do with those 1500 koku per province!

I think the verdict is quite clear now so we can reach a conclusion:

CONCLUSION

(1) Upgrade a Market to Rice Exchange if there is a good Metsuke stationed in the province. Since at most we have 5 Metsuke, we will at most upgrade 5 Markets to Rice Exchange. Naturally, this better happens in our richest provinces (very fertile soil, gold mine, etc.) to maximize the additional profit.

(2) Don't bother upgrading the Market in any other provinces.

(3) Even with Metsuke, it is only more worthwhile to upgrade a Market to Rice Exchange if we play a shorter campaign and have a low number of provinces for the majority of the game. The loss of 1500 koku in early game makes a much bigger impact than the gain of 1500 koku in mid- or late-game.

(4) Never upgrade the market if you will finish the campaign in the next 20-25 turns. (It only makes more money 15-20 turns after its completion. The construction of Rice Exchange takes another 5 seasons.)

[Jarmam]

There is one important piece of information missing. The benefit of upping a Market to a RE is 300 commerce and +5 town growth at the cost of 1 food. The benefit of going from Market to Merchant Guild is +800 commerce and +15 town growth for only 1 more food (edit: IE 2 food more than a Market).

If Merchant Guilds did not exist, Rice Exchanges would be close to worthless.

Edit: No, they would be completely worthless. What do you know.

Edit2: No, they are actually only close to worthless and at least not counterproductive unless you blitz (excluding the taking-up-a-building-slot-thing, but I guess the market would anyway)

[Maltz]

Let's compare Market vs. Merchant Guild:

Market
- Provide +5 town growth bonus in the province
- +200 commerce in the province

Rice Exchange + Merchant Guild
- Provide +20 town growth bonus in the province
- +1000 commerce
- Consumes 2 food
- Costs ~4750 koku (again, this value varies by the level of the Developmental Commissioner, etc.)

So essentially upgrading a Market to Rice Exchange is about:
(1) -4750 koku
(2) +800 commerce in the province
(3) +15 town growth in the province
(4) -2 food surplus

So we can simply make a few changes of the equation and make the same plots.

Extra Profit = -4750 + 800 x ET% x T + (1-RS){[15-2P] + [15-2P] x T} x T x ET-AVE%



(1) With Good Metsuke (32-36% Effective Tax Rate)

We can indeed see that there is an improvement of profit across the board. Actually, in all situations we are still earning extra profit 100 turns after the completion of the Merchant Guild. If we stay small, our extra profit could go into tens of thousands! This is great.

But if we expand rapidly to 22 provinces, upgrading to Merchant Guild makes just less than 5000 extra koku 60 turns after its completion. Maybe we can invest that money somewhere else where we can see a big difference sooner.

[Maltz]

(2) No Metsuke (20-24% Effective Tax Rate)

This looks better than Rice Exchange alone, but is it better enough? For the 10-province scenario, we only earn 5000 extra koku about 60 turns after buildings are completed. And if our territory grows big, we still lose profit from the expensive investment.

CONCLUSION

Upgrade to Merchant Guild if you have a good Metsuke (high effective tax rate) stationed in the castle town, and if you like to expand slowly. Otherwise, it is more profitable to leave it as Market.

So where else can we spend the money? There are two especially good investments for early-mid game:

(1) Army. More cities = more tax & more resources to sell. This is especially critical in early game. If there is no concern for conversion, it is a very good idea to go crazy on Ashigaru armies and keep taking cities until you pause before the Realm Divide (and then you can slim down your military to focus on infrastructure).

(2) Trade Fleet. Huge return of profit quickly. The western clans should go after this as soon as possible.

Perhaps upgrading the markets in very fertile provinces/gold mine parked with good Metsuke is the way to go for eastern clans to prosper. For example, if I were Uesugi, I would hire a lv 2 Metsuke from my ex-vassal province (after it is defeated by Hojo or someone) and park the Metsuke in Sado (gold mine) with a merchant guild there.

[Jarmam]

This is pretty important stuff. I can see a lot of people getting absolutely flabbergasted by the extent to which food and market structures affect your economy. Heck, I am flabbergasted about the extent to which Rice Exchanges are worthless. They're actually worse than worthless in that they not only take up a building slot, they also cost you money. That's pretty important stuff and perhaps an explanation as to why a lot of people struggle with lategame economy. I used to always get 4-5 MGs eventually with just about any faction as a preparation for RD but heck, my good Metsuke seem a lot better off in the field except maybe 1 in a goldmine province.

I never really made merchant guilds early with land-based factions but that's mostly due to their cost and relatively high tech requirement early on where you'd rather just expand with most of the factions. Its interesting to note that if you dont plan out your every move to accomodate them, then they're also barely effective at best and a liability at worst. I used to swear to teching Tax Reform before Equal Fields as the income bonus is vastly stronger, but Equal Fields' effect on your middle-lategame econ (if you upgrade farms helluva early) might be a lot more effective than given credit for - even if you slowly creep forward as a faction like Date or Ikko.

In fact, the only argument that seems to be left for even bothering with them (MGs) with a faction like, say, Tokugawa or Hattori, is that you're planning on doing an Kabunakama+Shobai District with a r4+ Metsuke and you want the town to start growing very early on to cap out the bonus, but even then its not even a given.

Thanks for setting up all the graphs, Maltz! Nothing says conclusion like numbers.

[Graphic]

In depth and well done. I decided to promote this to an article. Check it out: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/conte...ctive-analysis