Units, Costs, and Actual unit costs - Analysis of units per unit cost
Introduction
Not many players weigh the numbers out when picking units to build. I believe this is why the market prices differ so greatly. If you want to get the most bang for your buck, you've come to the right place!
Terminology:
Actual unit costs: The amount of gold you must spend to build one specific unit.
X per gold: The amount of X stat you have for each gold spent.
The Math:
Let F = Food to build a unit
Let L = Lumber to build a unit
Let S = Stone to build a unit
Let I = Iron to build a unit
Assumption: Prices of Food, Lumber, Stone, and Iron are as follows. These may not be actual values, but are just picked from Server 3 as the market generally hovers around. They may differ for each server, and you'll have to compensate for those differences.
Food: 0.050
Lumber: 0.100
Stone = 0.060
Iron = 0.025
Let G = The amount of gold required to purchase the resources to produce a unit.
So G = F*0.050 + L*0.100 + S*0.060 + I*0.025
Or G = F*Pf + L*Pl + S*Ps + I*Pi (where Px = Price of resource)
Summary of units:
Unit Type Food Lumber Stone Iron Total Gold Cost
Worker 50 150 0 10 17.75
Warrior 80 100 0 50 15.25
Scout 120 200 0 150 29.75
Pikeman 150 500 0 100 60.00
Swordsman 200 150 0 400 35.00
Archer 300 350 0 300 57.50
Cavalry 1000 600 0 500 122.50
Cataphract 2000 500 0 2500 212.50
Transporter 600 1500 0 350 188.75
Ballista 2500 3000 0 1800 470.00
Battering Ram 4000 6000 0 1500 837.50
Catapult 5000 5000 8000 1200 1260.00
The total gold cost per unit is really the only attribute that matters in regards to the units cost. So a pikeman who has a hefty 60 gold cost is really only better than a warrior with a 15.25 gold cost if a pikeman can kill 4 warriors. I mean, why would you buy 1000 pikeman if you can buy 4000 warriors for the same price, and the warriors will outperform the pikeman on every occasion? This is a direct result of high lumber prices. You can get almost 2 swordsmen for the price of 1 pikemen, and I guarantee you they will outperform the pikemen 100% of the time (given you have twice as many).
Effective Hit Points:
Effective hit points are the actual numerical quantity of life that the unit has, compensating for defense. It is the best form of measurement for meat shields. The best way to get a grasp of what the best meat shield is is to take the EHP (Effective hit points) per gold cost of the unit. Obviously a battering ram is a great meat shield because it has 5000 life, but at the cost of 837.50 gold you could have gotten 55 warriors, who would collectively boast an 11000 net life force. Twice the bang for your buck!
Let EHP = Effective Hit Points
Let Life = Life attribute of the unit in question
Let Defense = Defense attribute of the unit in question
Let EHP10 = Effective Hit Points with full defense research
Let Def10 = Defense attribute of the unit in question with full defense research
EHP = Life / (1 - (Defense/1000))
EHP/Gold = Life*G / (1 - (Defense/1000))
EHP10 = Life / (1 - (Defense*1.5/1000))
EHP10/Gold = Life*G / (1 - (Defense*1.5/1000))
Heres a chart of meat shield information:
Unit Type Gold Cost EHP EHP/G EHP10 EHP10/G
Worker 17.75 101.01 5.69 101.52 5.72
Warrior 15.25 210.53 13.81 216.22 14.18
Scout 29.75 102.04 3.43 103.09 3.47
Pikeman 60.00 352.94 5.88 387.10 6.45
Swordsman 35.00 466.67 13.33 560.00 16.00
Archer 57.50 263.16 4.58 270.27 4.70
Cavalry 122.50 609.76 4.98 684.93 5.59
Cataphract 212.50 1538.46 7.24 2105.26 9.91
Transporter 188.75 744.68 3.95 769.23 4.08
Ballista 470.00 380.95 0.81 421.05 0.90
Battering Ram 837.50 5952.38 7.11 6578.95 7.86
Catapult 1260.00 600.00 0.48 685.71 0.54
As you can see, warriors and swordsmen are by far the best bang for your buck for meat shields. Cataphracts come as a distant 3rd, and pikeman, cavalry, and archers are simply not good meat shields at all. Essentially what this comes down to is that if you are going to take casualties (and you will), you're going to want to lose Swordsmen and Warriors.
Transportation - Who is the best resource mover?
Since I played travian quite a bit, and loved my TT's, I love finding out what is the best hauler. You want to be able to pillage as many resources as possible, but don't want to spend zillions of gold on units to do so. So whos the most efficient hauler?
Hauler Rating = Load * Speed / Unit Cost
Explanation of rating: The faster the unit is, the faster you can haul the resources. The more resources you can hold, the faster you can haul resources. Load * Speed is just a value that represents hauling a number of units a given distance. Truncated with only a few units because I hit max characters for post =[.
Unit Type Gold Cost Load Speed Hauler Rating
Worker 17.75 200 180 2028.17
Warrior 15.25 20 200 262.30
Pikeman 60.00 40 300 200.00
Swordsman 35.00 30 275 235.71
Cavalry 122.50 100 1000 816.33
Cataphract 212.50 80 750 282.35
Transporter 188.75 5000 150 3973.51
As you can see, transports are the king of haulers, followed by workers, than cavalry at a distant 3rd. Ballista, Battering Ram, and Catapults are most definately the worst haulers (imagine that). I'd say transports are 100 times more superior to any other unit just because they don't fight.
Power! Best offensive troop
Same chart as EHP but lets analyze Attack power per gold. PLEASE NOTE that the attack power of Archers, Catapults, and Ballistas, are HALVED as per this thread: Combat Formula
Unit Type Gold Cost Attack Attack/Gold
Worker 17.75 5 0.28
Warrior 15.25 50 3.28
Scout 29.75 20 0.67
Pikeman 60.00 150 2.50
Swordsman 35.00 100 2.86
Archer 57.50 120 1.04
Cavalry 122.50 250 2.04
Cataphract 212.50 350 1.65
Transporter 188.75 10 0.05
Ballista 470.00 450 0.48
Battering Ram 837.50 250 0.30
Catapult 1260.00 600 0.24
Imagine that, Swords #2, Warriors #1 =]
Discussion
So in a nutshell, I've summed up that swordsmen are hands down the best unit in the game... for now. The awesome aspect of Civony that really makes this chart worth the effort is that the market prices for resources are dynamic and change. If the market ever meets equilibrium (doubtful, as people are generally stupid as a whole), then the price of iron should skyrocket, and the price of lumber should plummit. Unfortunately I just don't see this as possible. The price of food is probably going to be awkward in all scenarios because it is plundered infinitely from barbarians. I think food will always have high supply and little demand, and I estimate that in a month the food prices will be so dirt cheap that you won't be able to GIVE it away.
Now this article begs a question about using units. Given the circumstances, why would anyone ever build pikemen? They are inferior to swordsmen in every single aspect. EVERY SINGLE ONE. On top of that, you can screen swords with one additional unit (1 pikemen) to cancel a volley of archer shots.
Similarly, what is the point of using cavalry? Cavalry race ahead of combat and engage the enemy very quickly. If your army consists of 50% swords and 50% cavalry, your cavalry will fight the enemy and die before your swords begin to engage. That is not very good. What you want is one gigantic force that moves across the battlefield and instagibs the enemy in 1 round of combat to prevent him from dealing additional damage in subsequent rounds. Take for instance 10000 swords vs 2000 cavalry and 3000 pikemen. The swords will rape the cavalry in one round. Then a few rounds later the pikemen will get raped by the swords, in one round. If you were to have say 5000 swords and 10000 warriors, it'd be different: The swords may lose to the 2000 cavalry, and the warriors would clean up.
Heres some sample exercises you can try (include 1 single archer on each side to maximize initial range):
Example 1
10000 swords
1 archer
vs
5500 cavalry
500 pikemen
1 archer
Result: Cavalry side wins, 4883 cavalry died
Example 2
10000 warriors
5000 swords
1 archer
vs
5500 cavalry
500 pikemen
1 archer
Result: Cavalry side wins, 4433 cavalry died
Example 3
3333 swords
6666 warriors
3000 cavalry
1 archer
vs
5500 cavalry
500 pikemen
1 archer
Result: Cavalry side wins, 5271 cavalry died.
Conclusion
Mass one melee unit and only one melee unit. Do not mix melee units. Pick a unit and support it with ranged. That is your best bet. Mixing Cavalry and Infantry in the same army is never a good idea. Swordsmen are hands down the best bang for your buck right now, and require only level 3 barracks to build! Warriors when massed are surely a force to be reckon with as well, but they have to be massed. If you aren't outnumbering archers 4 to 1 you aren't massing correctly.
Other future topics
Some other debateable information that may be touched upon in the future:
1. Cost of upkeeping each unit relative to their usefulness
2. Time to build comparisons, what unit gives you the most attack power given a limited number of barracks and infinite resources?
3. Evaluation of meat shield rating when compensating for both Life upgrades and Defense upgrades. Life and Defense improve eachother!
Introduction
Not many players weigh the numbers out when picking units to build. I believe this is why the market prices differ so greatly. If you want to get the most bang for your buck, you've come to the right place!
Terminology:
Actual unit costs: The amount of gold you must spend to build one specific unit.
X per gold: The amount of X stat you have for each gold spent.
The Math:
Let F = Food to build a unit
Let L = Lumber to build a unit
Let S = Stone to build a unit
Let I = Iron to build a unit
Assumption: Prices of Food, Lumber, Stone, and Iron are as follows. These may not be actual values, but are just picked from Server 3 as the market generally hovers around. They may differ for each server, and you'll have to compensate for those differences.
Food: 0.050
Lumber: 0.100
Stone = 0.060
Iron = 0.025
Let G = The amount of gold required to purchase the resources to produce a unit.
So G = F*0.050 + L*0.100 + S*0.060 + I*0.025
Or G = F*Pf + L*Pl + S*Ps + I*Pi (where Px = Price of resource)
Summary of units:
Unit Type Food Lumber Stone Iron Total Gold Cost
Worker 50 150 0 10 17.75
Warrior 80 100 0 50 15.25
Scout 120 200 0 150 29.75
Pikeman 150 500 0 100 60.00
Swordsman 200 150 0 400 35.00
Archer 300 350 0 300 57.50
Cavalry 1000 600 0 500 122.50
Cataphract 2000 500 0 2500 212.50
Transporter 600 1500 0 350 188.75
Ballista 2500 3000 0 1800 470.00
Battering Ram 4000 6000 0 1500 837.50
Catapult 5000 5000 8000 1200 1260.00
The total gold cost per unit is really the only attribute that matters in regards to the units cost. So a pikeman who has a hefty 60 gold cost is really only better than a warrior with a 15.25 gold cost if a pikeman can kill 4 warriors. I mean, why would you buy 1000 pikeman if you can buy 4000 warriors for the same price, and the warriors will outperform the pikeman on every occasion? This is a direct result of high lumber prices. You can get almost 2 swordsmen for the price of 1 pikemen, and I guarantee you they will outperform the pikemen 100% of the time (given you have twice as many).
Effective Hit Points:
Effective hit points are the actual numerical quantity of life that the unit has, compensating for defense. It is the best form of measurement for meat shields. The best way to get a grasp of what the best meat shield is is to take the EHP (Effective hit points) per gold cost of the unit. Obviously a battering ram is a great meat shield because it has 5000 life, but at the cost of 837.50 gold you could have gotten 55 warriors, who would collectively boast an 11000 net life force. Twice the bang for your buck!
Let EHP = Effective Hit Points
Let Life = Life attribute of the unit in question
Let Defense = Defense attribute of the unit in question
Let EHP10 = Effective Hit Points with full defense research
Let Def10 = Defense attribute of the unit in question with full defense research
EHP = Life / (1 - (Defense/1000))
EHP/Gold = Life*G / (1 - (Defense/1000))
EHP10 = Life / (1 - (Defense*1.5/1000))
EHP10/Gold = Life*G / (1 - (Defense*1.5/1000))
Heres a chart of meat shield information:
Unit Type Gold Cost EHP EHP/G EHP10 EHP10/G
Worker 17.75 101.01 5.69 101.52 5.72
Warrior 15.25 210.53 13.81 216.22 14.18
Scout 29.75 102.04 3.43 103.09 3.47
Pikeman 60.00 352.94 5.88 387.10 6.45
Swordsman 35.00 466.67 13.33 560.00 16.00
Archer 57.50 263.16 4.58 270.27 4.70
Cavalry 122.50 609.76 4.98 684.93 5.59
Cataphract 212.50 1538.46 7.24 2105.26 9.91
Transporter 188.75 744.68 3.95 769.23 4.08
Ballista 470.00 380.95 0.81 421.05 0.90
Battering Ram 837.50 5952.38 7.11 6578.95 7.86
Catapult 1260.00 600.00 0.48 685.71 0.54
As you can see, warriors and swordsmen are by far the best bang for your buck for meat shields. Cataphracts come as a distant 3rd, and pikeman, cavalry, and archers are simply not good meat shields at all. Essentially what this comes down to is that if you are going to take casualties (and you will), you're going to want to lose Swordsmen and Warriors.
Transportation - Who is the best resource mover?
Since I played travian quite a bit, and loved my TT's, I love finding out what is the best hauler. You want to be able to pillage as many resources as possible, but don't want to spend zillions of gold on units to do so. So whos the most efficient hauler?
Hauler Rating = Load * Speed / Unit Cost
Explanation of rating: The faster the unit is, the faster you can haul the resources. The more resources you can hold, the faster you can haul resources. Load * Speed is just a value that represents hauling a number of units a given distance. Truncated with only a few units because I hit max characters for post =[.
Unit Type Gold Cost Load Speed Hauler Rating
Worker 17.75 200 180 2028.17
Warrior 15.25 20 200 262.30
Pikeman 60.00 40 300 200.00
Swordsman 35.00 30 275 235.71
Cavalry 122.50 100 1000 816.33
Cataphract 212.50 80 750 282.35
Transporter 188.75 5000 150 3973.51
As you can see, transports are the king of haulers, followed by workers, than cavalry at a distant 3rd. Ballista, Battering Ram, and Catapults are most definately the worst haulers (imagine that). I'd say transports are 100 times more superior to any other unit just because they don't fight.
Power! Best offensive troop
Same chart as EHP but lets analyze Attack power per gold. PLEASE NOTE that the attack power of Archers, Catapults, and Ballistas, are HALVED as per this thread: Combat Formula
Unit Type Gold Cost Attack Attack/Gold
Worker 17.75 5 0.28
Warrior 15.25 50 3.28
Scout 29.75 20 0.67
Pikeman 60.00 150 2.50
Swordsman 35.00 100 2.86
Archer 57.50 120 1.04
Cavalry 122.50 250 2.04
Cataphract 212.50 350 1.65
Transporter 188.75 10 0.05
Ballista 470.00 450 0.48
Battering Ram 837.50 250 0.30
Catapult 1260.00 600 0.24
Imagine that, Swords #2, Warriors #1 =]
Discussion
So in a nutshell, I've summed up that swordsmen are hands down the best unit in the game... for now. The awesome aspect of Civony that really makes this chart worth the effort is that the market prices for resources are dynamic and change. If the market ever meets equilibrium (doubtful, as people are generally stupid as a whole), then the price of iron should skyrocket, and the price of lumber should plummit. Unfortunately I just don't see this as possible. The price of food is probably going to be awkward in all scenarios because it is plundered infinitely from barbarians. I think food will always have high supply and little demand, and I estimate that in a month the food prices will be so dirt cheap that you won't be able to GIVE it away.
Now this article begs a question about using units. Given the circumstances, why would anyone ever build pikemen? They are inferior to swordsmen in every single aspect. EVERY SINGLE ONE. On top of that, you can screen swords with one additional unit (1 pikemen) to cancel a volley of archer shots.
Similarly, what is the point of using cavalry? Cavalry race ahead of combat and engage the enemy very quickly. If your army consists of 50% swords and 50% cavalry, your cavalry will fight the enemy and die before your swords begin to engage. That is not very good. What you want is one gigantic force that moves across the battlefield and instagibs the enemy in 1 round of combat to prevent him from dealing additional damage in subsequent rounds. Take for instance 10000 swords vs 2000 cavalry and 3000 pikemen. The swords will rape the cavalry in one round. Then a few rounds later the pikemen will get raped by the swords, in one round. If you were to have say 5000 swords and 10000 warriors, it'd be different: The swords may lose to the 2000 cavalry, and the warriors would clean up.
Heres some sample exercises you can try (include 1 single archer on each side to maximize initial range):
Example 1
10000 swords
1 archer
vs
5500 cavalry
500 pikemen
1 archer
Result: Cavalry side wins, 4883 cavalry died
Example 2
10000 warriors
5000 swords
1 archer
vs
5500 cavalry
500 pikemen
1 archer
Result: Cavalry side wins, 4433 cavalry died
Example 3
3333 swords
6666 warriors
3000 cavalry
1 archer
vs
5500 cavalry
500 pikemen
1 archer
Result: Cavalry side wins, 5271 cavalry died.
Conclusion
Mass one melee unit and only one melee unit. Do not mix melee units. Pick a unit and support it with ranged. That is your best bet. Mixing Cavalry and Infantry in the same army is never a good idea. Swordsmen are hands down the best bang for your buck right now, and require only level 3 barracks to build! Warriors when massed are surely a force to be reckon with as well, but they have to be massed. If you aren't outnumbering archers 4 to 1 you aren't massing correctly.
Other future topics
Some other debateable information that may be touched upon in the future:
1. Cost of upkeeping each unit relative to their usefulness
2. Time to build comparisons, what unit gives you the most attack power given a limited number of barracks and infinite resources?
3. Evaluation of meat shield rating when compensating for both Life upgrades and Defense upgrades. Life and Defense improve eachother!
