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Home Buying Guide for Optimum Coin Output

DeletedUser2780

houses%2C%20forge%20of%20empires%20(medium).bmp


higher resolution download link (click download along top bar of browser):
https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=dcab...#cid=DCAB64549AF6C1A4&id=DCAB64549AF6C1A4!187


Excel 2010 file (don't edit through SkyDrive, functionality will be missing. direct download may also remove functionality. choose EDIT WORKBOOK and then EDIT IN EXCEL. Then SAVE through excel):
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=DCAB64549AF6C1A4!190&authkey=!ADM8_gSobYGmwZc


Don’t be intimidated by the graph! It’s intuitive once you understand how to navigate it. Let me help you:



  • The vertical axis along the left side is how many coins you’ll get per day (based on 30 total homes of one type).
  • The horizontal axis along the bottom is how many times you collect from your homes per day.
  • Each color represents the houses unlocked after completing an age. I used the same colors that the game developers used in the background of the research menu. Red, for example, is the iron age. If you’ve unlocked all the homes from the iron age, try focusing only on red.
  • Shapes are used to distinguish the production cycle times. Square, for example, is for homes that produce coins every 15 minutes. If you find it hard to see the shapes, you can also tell the production cycle by the shape of the line. 8 hour homes level off (straighten out) at 2 collections per day. 4 hour homes level off at 4 collections. 1 hour homes have a constant rise.
  • Premium homes are distinguished with dashed lines.
  • Colored circles signify “thresholds” of value for homes in the same age. It is where the value between homes is exactly the same. If you make ten collections per day in the bronze age, there is no difference in output between 4 hour chalets and 1 hour thatched.
  • The legend of homes on the right is grouped by production times and in the order you would unlock them.
  • Huts (5 minute cycle) were deliberately not included. Although huts can be valuable in the bronze and iron age if you collect very aggressively, including such a short cycle home in the graph would have meant showing collection times out to 50 instead of 14. This would have made the graph harder to read because all the lines would look closer. I left them out so that we could stay ‘zoomed in’ on the more reasonable and commonly used collection frequencies.
  • This is strictly for maximizing coin production. No consideration was given to cost, population, quest completion, etc.
  • There is a maximum number of times you can collect from each home. I assumed 14 collections for 1 hour homes, 4 collections for 4 hour homes and 2 collections for 8 hour homes.


How to use this graph:

Pretend for a moment that you collect from your homes exactly the same amount each day: 4 times. Look for 4 along the bottom axis and follow it up. The highest line that crosses this point is the best coin producing home. If you’ve unlocked all homes in the bronze age, then Chalet would be the best non-premium performer. If you unlocked all the homes in the iron age, then Cottage would be the best non-premium performer.


What if you don’t collect precisely 4 times every day? What if it greatly depends on your schedule? Base your decision on the average amount of times you collect. The greater the variation in your collections, the more days you should add together to get a more realistic average.


Examples for finding average collection times:


Q: What is the average collection time for a person who collects only once Monday through Friday but as much ten times each Saturday and Sunday? This person follows this pattern week to week.
A: You have 1 + 1 + 1 +1 +1 + 10 + 10 = 25 collections in one week. 25 collections divided by 7 days is 3.57 collections per day. Always round the result down to the nearest whole number since you can’t collect ‘half a time’. In this case, you’re averaging 3 collections per day. Since this person’s weekly routine is about the same, then this is a reliable average.


Q: What is the average collection for a person whose collection times vary even for different weeks?
A: Just add more days to the sum above. I used a week’s worth of days, you could use a month or more.


Now that you know how to find your average, you’re ready to optimize. Let’s pretend you’re in the Early Middle Ages and you have all the homes unlocked. You’ve calculated that your average collection frequency is 7 times per day. Now go and look at this point in the chart. It says 8 hour clapboard homes will make more coins than 1 hour frame homes. The obvious choice then would be to buy clapboards. But notice that if you follow each of those home lines, you see that they cross each other at 8 collections per day. That is the “threshold” (encapsulated in a colored circle) where each home's value intersects. In other words, they both produce the same amount of coins. If you can change your habits to collect two more times per day, you’ll be above this threshold, making frame houses the new ideal choice. When you’re comparing 1, 4 or 8 hour homes, look for a threshold. Find out whether your average is above or below that threshold and ask yourself if it’s worth changing your collection schedule to get more coins.

Q: What’s the fastest way to make a lot of coins?
A: All other considerations aside (and like your intuition probably told you), the fastest way to make coins is to choose 1 hour homes and collect as much above the threshold as you can. Follow the line for 14 collections up. You’ll see that 1 hour homes (diamond) outperform all other home types of the same age in all but the Colonial age. What is not as intuitive is that, at this many collections, they nearly double the output of the same quantity of 8 hour homes. The only exception is the premium plantation home, which dominates nearly all other homes under 14 collections. My approach is to buy mostly 1 hour homes and then add 8 hour ones as needed for population boost.

I've also included a link up above to an excel file that will:

  • generate your own custom graph based on houses you've unlocked
  • estimate your current income based on your existing houses and collection rates
  • estimate your future income based on desired houses and compare it against your current
  • tell you resale value of current homes
  • tell you cost of future desired homes
  • tell you which house is best for you to buy (income-wise)
  • generally helps in planning
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser

I like the work you put in to the graph and I think it will help a lot who struggle like I do with gathering coins and supplies. i do however would like to see the HR graph but cannot. can you see if you can fix the link please.

Good job
 

DeletedUser

Wow, great guide! We need more people like you to make guides! Great work!
 

DeletedUser

Hi Strathgard, this is some damn useful data, thanks :) If you don't mind, I may use it in a test project of my own, second round of testing HTML5 canvas.
 

DeletedUser2548

Strath --

This is a fantastic tool for everyone. It definitely has helped me determine which houses to build in each age. Thanks so much for all the work you put into it! :)

Fleur
 

DeletedUser

Any chance of updating the chart to include Progressive Age?
 

DeletedUser4844

Nice chart. It might also be very helpful to see what total coins per day look like given the variables you have already charted, with a Saint Mark's great building. You might want to just make 10 more charts for the various possible levels of saint mark's. Those of us interested in maximizing coin output generally do get a saint mark's great building, so this would probably be very useful for that. However, due to Saint Mark's limit of 90 coin collections per day it often favors 8 and 12 hour housing more then 1-hour housing.
 

DeletedUser2780

sorry Decorius, I have no plans on including Industrial Age and on. However, this should be good enough to get new players started, as the basic concepts still apply. Once you get thinking about how many collections you make per day, it's pretty easy to make a value judgment.

gwal: I think I wrote this before GB's were introduced into the game. The Saint Mark's GB has made it dramatically easier to increase coin production. there are so many more variables now that I can't see how I could concisely do all those comparisons. Again, I think this is a sufficient introduction for those who are new to the game. what would really be nice is an applet in which you could input what city you have and then input what city you want, and see a side by side comparison that could look forward into the future a specified amount of days. the attached excel file at the top does this to some extent but there's nothing on GB's.
 

DeletedUser

Urf!

This is 2-1/2 years old which probably explains why the download link no longer works. Not to mention, there's a good chance the data is out of date. :(

Anybody know of an update?
 

DeletedUser9184

Urf!

This is 2-1/2 years old which probably explains why the download link no longer works. Not to mention, there's a good chance the data is out of date. :(

Anybody know of an update?
Unfortunately, no. You sure you would want something like this to be updated? St. Marks really changes things up alot. Plus, this doesn't even consider the space needed to keep the population of the homes delighted which is a major factor if you're specifically looking at the homes for the coins
 

DeletedUser

I'm only in HMA and don't find that I'm ever short of coins and players that are further ahead of me say that they have millions of coins so I don't think that coin production is that important as you progress through the technology. Space is the far more important commodity in this game and so I think the houses with more people per square are more important then houses that produce more coins per square.
 

DeletedUser10415

I've just entered Contemporary Era and I have 5 million coins, down from 30 million. I recently bought a lot of forge points.

So I suppose if one chooses to only have enough coins to maintain their city and advance along the tech tree at an average pace, coin production isn't that important. But if you want to buy forge points with coin, then there is no such thing as too much coin production.
 

DeletedUser

But I buy forge points as well - usually several everyday - and coin production is still not a problem because of St. Mark's Basilica. The main issue is still space and wasting space by having more houses by using the shorter cycle coin producing ones is going to become problematic. Not to mention that the shorter cycle housing is only beneficial to coin production if you don't have a St. Mark's and your able to collect on those 1 hour cycles 10 to 15 times a day. Otherwise the coins are just sitting there for your neighbours to take.
 
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