Surprisingly Good and Bad Units 1.2 Edition

[Aemilius Paulus]

Hehe, my grandparents did indeed fight well... ...and eat too, as human flesh is highly delectable, akin to that of a swine (kinda shows who we are most closely related to, along with rats, who share most of our anatomy and general way the body functions and responds to various stimuli- hence the use of pigs and rats in drug testing), only much more flavourful. Although this does depend on the diet of the human.

[Maion Maroneios]

Yikes Aimilios...

Maion

[athanaric]

Hehe, my grandparents did indeed fight well... ...and eat too, as human flesh is highly delectable, akin to that of a swine (kinda shows who we are most closely related to, along with rats, who share most of our anatomy and general way the body functions and responds to various stimuli- hence the use of pigs and rats in drug testing), only much more flavourful. Although this does depend on the diet of the human.

I believe vegetarians and vegans taste best. After all, we don't eat flesh-eating animals, do we?

[Watchman]

Mainly because that'd be bloody ineffective. Though, fish...

[Ludens]

I believe vegetarians and vegans taste best. After all, we don't eat flesh-eating animals, do we?

That's because breeding carnivorous animals is not cost-effective. Less than 10% of consumed biomass will be converted into consumer mass. In other words: to breed a 100 pound predator you need to feed it more than 1000 pound of (presumably vegetarian) prey. It's far more profitable to sell this 1000 pound worth of vegetarian animals, than it is to feed them to carnivores and have only 100 pound of meat available.

[Maion Maroneios]

Yeah, I remember vaugely something about this 10% thing during my last year at school. I remember our Biology teacher telling us that, generally, it is less cost-effective to actually feed on animals than feed on plants. But with the same logic breeding herbivores is more cost-effective than breeding carnivores.

Maion

[Ludens]

Yeah, I remember vaugely something about this 10% thing during my last year at school. I remember our Biology teacher telling us that, generally, it is less cost-effective to actually feed on animals than feed on plants.

Well, from the point of view of the consumer it doesn't matter much whether the biomass comes from plants or animals: 100 pounds of biomass is 100 pounds worth of energy, regardless where it comes from. This ignores specific nutritious needs and specialized digestive systems obviously, but if you take those in account a carnivore like the wolf actually has more trouble obtaining and digesting 100 pounds of plants than 100 pounds of flesh.

However, from an ecological point of view vegetarians are more efficient. It takes 1000 pounds of plants to create a 100 pound vegetarian, but it takes 1000 pound of vegetarian (which in turn requires 10.000 pound of plants) to create a 100 pound carnivore. In fact, it's even more inefficient than that, since less than 50% of animals reaches reproductive age. So it probably takes 1500 pounds of plant to get a 100 pound vegetarian as well as its brother, which died when it was 50 pounds.

[Watchman]

That's the good old food chain. Plants and the like do the primary production of energy and nutrients. Herbivores come and get theirs by eating the plants. Carnivores duly feed on the herbivores. Works quite well, but given the diminishing returns relative to the primary production as you move up the chain (ie. why there's invariably WAY more herbivores than carnivores preying on them), means there's no economic sense in intentionally raising carnivores for food.

[satalexton]

SO it's like the Romaioi gets chewed up by the pantodapoi, which in turns gets whittled down by any missle unit, which the hetairoi would charge n rout...