Upgrade Market to Rice Exchange? An objective analysis

[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