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Heroes Community > Heroes 5 - Temple of Ashan > Thread: Taxpayer & Training
Thread: Taxpayer & Training
damedley
damedley

Tavern Dweller
posted September 26, 2006 11:57 PM
Edited by damedley at 01:04, 27 Sep 2006.

Taxpayer & Training

Has anyone tried maintaining as many Peasants as possible, or are they always upgraded ASAP?  While the Taxpayer ability is nowhere near game-breaking, it seems like it might combine well with Training to provide a significant mid-to-late game advantage.

The standard training scheme is to make nigh-useless peasants into archers.  With enough gold you can have huge stacks of very useful archers or marksmen.  Anyone who has played Necro can appreciate this strategy - just ask, "What if my Skeleton Archers actually knew how to shoot?"

This variant would preserve the 49 peasants you get every week (w/castle and edited to include Farms) as a revenue source and a garrison.  Whether you want to convert archers to footmen or archers and footmen to priests or all three to cavaliers (if you've got that kind of dough!) is a matter of individual taste and game conditions.

If you recruit peasants at the beginning of every week (20 gold * 49 = 980) by the end of the week you'll have gotten 343 in tax revenue (7 gold * 49).  If we're talking about a Castle you probably have a Capital as well, so that's less than 10% increase in total revenue.

But peasants have the ability to keep accumulating.  Let's extend the example out 1 month instead.  Now you've earned 3,430 in revenue from the peasants, which is over a 20% increase for the month.  And after two months you've earned 12,348!

Now, if you've got the luxury of wasting 980 gold per week on units you'll never use, you're probably going to win anyway.  But we're not depending on that; at any time you can take your mass of peasants and upgrade them to archers - which make a very servicable castle defense unit.  Or upgrade them to whatever you can afford before you make an assault on an enemy castle.  In which case you've really lost nothing; it's a pretty standard strategy to train up peasants.

The key stat for Taxpayer is that it takes 20 days to pay for itself.  Contrast that with Town Hall/City Hall/Capital that pay themselves off in only 5 days.  But on the other hand, peasants have sort of paid for themselves already because you were probably going to recruit them eventually regardless.  The real cost of this strategy is the opportunity cost of not using those troops right away to attack neutral mines or enemy players.  But if you're using training extensively then this shouldn't be too high; if you've got the gold you can make good troops.

Going up to Capital still is a much better investment (unless you need those troops at hand right away), but I could see keeping a garrison of peasants being a very useful strategy.

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Maurice
Maurice

Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
posted September 27, 2006 12:03 AM

Don't forget the Farms addition, which increases Peasant growth by 5 each week, pushing you to +49 Peasants per week. This may throw your calculations a bit off .

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yasmiel
yasmiel


Supreme Hero
Former Chessmaster
posted September 27, 2006 12:04 AM

Especialy effective with a hero that specialises in slightly overweight tax-payers ... in that case peasants pay off in 10 days
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damedley
damedley

Tavern Dweller
posted September 27, 2006 01:07 AM

Quote:
Especialy effective with a hero that specialises in slightly overweight tax-payers ... in that case peasants pay off in 10 days


Huh.  I didn't even notice her.  Ellaine gets +1 Att and Def for every two levels to Peasants and Conscripts, and doubles the tax revenue from peasants.  Maybe I or someone else will add up the numbers if you have her on your side.
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bjorn190
bjorn190


Responsible
Supreme Hero
Jebus maker
posted September 27, 2006 01:15 AM

Hero 1 buys peasants for the taxpayer ability. This will be at break even week 3.

Hero 2 uses that gold for building his town and conqueering the map.


Week 3 hero 1 finally thinks "wow it was SO worth it, now I get free gold!!" and heads out with the little army he has been able to put together while stockpiling peasants each week. He is suddenly attacked by hero 2 who has archangels and twice his stats!

At this point the money from the peasants have reached terminal inflation and are basically worthless. The intrest is 0%.

Its not worth it, stockpiling peasants. Other options for your money are far more worth it.


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Demortae
Demortae


Adventuring Hero
posted September 27, 2006 02:56 AM

Peasants are just one more source of income until they are trained, no you don't have to train them asap.  I suggest training only so many as you need to effectively capture what you need and leaving the rest with your castle sitter until around week 3 when you have the funds and the peasants to overwhelm mr. archangel up there with zounds of marksmen.  Any haven player opting to build the dwellings and recruit archangels while gold is scarce is a fool, IMHO.  Archangels are not going to make the difference that hundreds of marksmen will, but on the flip side, you must build up your town.  You must get castle/capitol and lvl 4/5 mage guild.  It's nice to have a small stack of inquisitors at hand, and paladins are great, but as the game stands now, marksmen reign supreme over all other troop types due to sheer numbers (which even skeleton archers can be hard pressed to equal).
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bjorn190
bjorn190


Responsible
Supreme Hero
Jebus maker
posted September 27, 2006 03:32 AM

Youve added a statement to the argument: that somehow building archangels and having great stats means you wont train all your peasants into marksmen. Thats not really what I meant here.

What I meant is, its better to use the scarse gold you have to buy marksmen, gold structures and possibly cavaliers, then get alot more gold and treasure from the map outside your castle.

Every single peasant in your castle is a financial burden and holds you back for 3 weeks with every purchase. That money would be far better spent on more profitable strategies like buying an extra marksman or getting caitol a few days earlier, or taking the boots of speed a week earlier and so on..

I agree that marksmen are great, but this is about peasants and their moneymaking  And my opinion is that its better to use that money on troops, gold structures, and efficient dwellings.


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TemjinGold
TemjinGold


Known Hero
posted September 27, 2006 03:45 AM

Not necessarily. If the map is fairly small and you focus on the training structures, you won't even need to build anything higher than squires (so you save LOTS of money by not building the higher tier dwellings themselves.) The hundreds of marksmen you can afford from not having to build anything will massacre any other army your opponent can muster in the first few weeks. In this case, grabbing peasants asap would be a good investment since you'll train them fairly soon.

Though on a large map, this could be suicidal.

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Demortae
Demortae


Adventuring Hero
posted September 27, 2006 09:18 AM

Why would you need more than marksmen and squires to clear the map?  Gold is not infinite anytime, most noticably not inside the first month, so where would you get the money to build your town, recruit high tier troops, and train peasants?  Unless your playing on a custom built map specifically designed for this, it will pretty much never happen.
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damedley
damedley

Tavern Dweller
posted September 27, 2006 09:37 PM

I don't think it's worth delaying City Hall/Capital to stockpile Peasants.  In fact, I'm quite sure it's not unless you might need those troops for defense/offense right away.  I did try this strategy in my last vs AI game and it worked out pretty well.  There were lots of peasant dwellings on the map and I got Ellaine, so I was raking in a good $2k per day at the end.  Then at the end of the game I converted those guys into a 1k stack of conscripts and it was actually a very dangerous and useful unit!

I'm not saying it's a great strategy, but I think it's a worthwhile one much of the time.  The main reason being those 1st level troops aren't going to help you much no matter what you do.  So you might as well stockpile them as much as you can without hurting your other buildings.  And then when the time comes you've got a nice stack of Conscripts or Archers to go to war with.

Furthermore, Training is a HUGE gold sink ( http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes5/ability_training.shtml ).  I think it's easy to gloss over just how expensive it is when you are playing, but when you look at the numbers it becomes pretty obvious.  So anything that gets you more gold is a boon to training.  Stocking up peasants while you are building your city and only using Training once you've got your city all built out (whatever that means for you) and all normal troops recruited - I think that's probably the optimal strategy in most cases.

From there I'm not so sure.  Training peasants into archers and archers into footmen is SO much cheaper than the other choices that it far outweighs the gold earned by Taxpayer.  So I'd give some consideration to keeping peasants around to fund more Training, but not much.  Klaus commanding an army comprised only of Griffins, Angels and Cavalry would be pretty awesome...
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bjorn190
bjorn190


Responsible
Supreme Hero
Jebus maker
posted September 28, 2006 04:13 AM

I totally agree with this here: that any surplus gold that you cant use for town progression or army should go into stockpiling peasants. It's better than just having the gold and not using it.


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