Opinions on Leased Land.

[Sn3z]

Alot of people say Leased land is terrible, I'am playing Otomo campaign atm and really don't think its that bad in the early game and I explain why;

You can research for +1 honour to mitigate 1 leased land and when your Daimyo levels up you can sometimes luck out on +1 honour which will give you another leased land. Further more you can go for lvl 4 to get +2 honour which gives you and you guessed it 2 more leased lands.

What leased land does is help you boom and its possible to time it with events like extra ranks to units. In my current game I mustered around 16 matchlocks with 2ranks(event) having previously buildup a decent income to sustain those units on the back of a leased land, I had another open building slot open for leased land waiting to make full use of the event once I triggered it. In my game atm I currently have 4 leased lands which maybe too much, but have stopped since I'am coming into the middle game, I have a stable economy which it would be fair to say they become a waste, plus my Daimyo is getting old.

[Smokedice]

Short term, leased land is awesome. You get a lot of money at once. Long term? Awful. You can't develop the land and get long term wealth from it.

[Hat8]

Originally posted by Rawfire:

Short term, leased land is awesome. You get a lot of money at once. Long term? Awful. You can't develop the land and get long term wealth from it.

But that short term boost can be enough to save your campaign.

[Elitewrecker PT]

You don't need saving with all the gold you rake in from the growth plus your easy to secure 3 trade posts.

[Smokedice]

Originally posted by 4240876367:

Originally posted by Rawfire:

Short term, leased land is awesome. You get a lot of money at once. Long term? Awful. You can't develop the land and get long term wealth from it.

But that short term boost can be enough to save your campaign.

that's why I said in my first sentence, short term is good

[BastardSword]

Completely worthless and pointless more because of the daimyo honor hit than the money or construction slot issues. It's why I avoid looting too.

Daimyo honor is a very useful stat and it affects diplomacy, general loyalty, and fief unrest, and probably some other things that I don't know about. Having it as high as possible just makes your life easier because other clans won't declare war on you when you're unprepared, and your towns will be happier. These are both crucial factors early on in the game. Yes it has a cap but then it can be useful later on in the game when you might need to avoid joining an ally in a war you don't want to fight.

If you're jonesing for money early on just keep bouncing your taxes between Normal and Very High over and over again. Early on you don't have to worry much about growth, it's better to do so when you have a lot of fiefs later on. Otomo matchlocks will shred enemies to pieces in a siege defense so you have a good upper hand early on in the game in terms of your armies.

[Sn3z]

It is possible to play on two honour you can even go down to one honour but it would need to be for not very long.

I playing my Otomo campaign again as I got to a stage where I was just going to steam roll, upon playing again I forgot you can get honour by also getting great victorys and creating vassals atleast there actually more ways now to get it up to four/five even with the burden of few leased lands.

[easytarget]

The cost/benefit is completely lost on me.

[shiggies713]

Originally posted by easytarget:

The cost/benefit is completely lost on me.

agreed. I've did it a few times, totally not worth it in the long campaign. If you really need money just sell military access to somebody.

[Fadeway]

The building is economically superior to all alternatives. A market for example gives you 200 wealth and -5350 gold. If you are alternating max and low taxes as you should be, that's ~70 gold per turn. You'd need 80 turns to break even with the leased land. Campaign are usually decided long before that point and that is ignoring the time value of money.

What I'm trying to say is that this isn't even a long/short term thing. It is better both long and short term unless you are playing campaigns where at turn 100+ you are still on the edge.

The reasons to not build it are the honor penalty which requires timing it with your daimyo's death, the agent cap, the missed happiness from sake dens. But if you can get around those drawbacks by say plopping down 3-4 of them on turn 20 when you just finished expanding and are about to replace your already low-honor daimyo, they are clear economic winners.

[shiggies713]

ok dude, play me in a legendary campaign and ill mop the floor with you. It would be so easy to bribe all your armies away.

[Fadeway]

no it is my weenie that is bigger

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by shiggies713:

Originally posted by easytarget:

The cost/benefit is completely lost on me.

agreed. I've did it a few times, totally not worth it in the long campaign. If you really need money just sell military access to somebody.

I also agree: Leased Land makes no sense for the player as a mechanic.

I guess there could be some situations where you could leverage it; but 99% of the time, imo, it's a really bad decision to lease the land instead of, say, building a Market in the slot.

If the player builds Markets all over the place, they'll reap big rewards late game. At only 850 koku, and no building or faction maluses, the Market is probably the most cost-effective building option in the entire game.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Fadeway:

The building is economically superior to all alternatives. A market for example gives you 200 wealth and -5350 gold. If you are alternating max and low taxes as you should be, that's ~70 gold per turn. You'd need 80 turns to break even with the leased land. Campaign are usually decided long before that point and that is ignoring the time value of money.

What I'm trying to say is that this isn't even a long/short term thing. It is better both long and short term unless you are playing campaigns where at turn 100+ you are still on the edge.

The reasons to not build it are the honor penalty which requires timing it with your daimyo's death, the agent cap, the missed happiness from sake dens. But if you can get around those drawbacks by say plopping down 3-4 of them on turn 20 when you just finished expanding and are about to replace your already low-honor daimyo, they are clear economic winners.

A Market theoretically breaks even at 12 to 28 turns at Normal Tax, just looking purely at the +200 taxable wealth, and depending on Admin Cost and whether Metsuke are present.

But something people often forget about the Market is it also gives +5 Growth per turn, so in reality, the return on investment happens much faster.

Also, this growth not only grows tax directly over time, but indirectly, as it takes away much of the hit to Wealth that happens when you alternate to Very High or Extortionate Tax Rate, making switching to higher rates more efficient, especially as the campaign goes on in turn count.

Getting 4,500 koku all at once definitely has merits, but it isn't something you can make a part of your infrastructure per se: as you said, it's a "building" you could only put in several places, and at a specific timing in the campaign, otherwise it's totally inefficient.

One of the biggest weaknesses of Leased Land is that you cannot use that slot for anything ever again, so combined with the -1 to Honor, there is some serious opportunity cost as well to go along with the 4,500 koku shot in the arm opportunity benefit.

There are other ways to trade on Honor for economic benefit. For example, if you choose a nice, juicy province and pillage it, you can gain between 10,000 to 20,000 koku as a lump sum. This makes getting 4,500 lump sum for the same -1 Honor look a lot less enticing. What's more, you can deliberately let the AI or another player take that province back, rebuild it and even expand it, so when you do occupy it for good, you haven't lost the full potential of the province for that -1 Honor (aside from a potential hit to Growth), whereas with the Leased Land you lose that building slot.

There is a sort of curve that happens too with the income, aside from breaking even with costs. Late game, trade income usually breaks down from RD, and your domestic economy takes on new meaning. If you Leased like 3 provinces early game, you got 13,500 koku to your treasury, but that is all you got even if you are 100 turns in, or 150 turns in. There is a savings boost, but there was no income stream from Leasing.

A Market, by comparison, built around turn 20, will have made 2,430 actual profit around turn 100, so it looks like a loss; but it is profit from a continual stream, i.e. 41 koku a turn at 20% tax rate, so combined with the rest of that province's regular wealth, you're looking at upkeep for 1 to 3 ash units (say 1.5), or "half" to 1 samurai unit.

With the 4,500 shot in the arm, that is upkeep for 1.5 ashigaru unit (around 100 koku) for around 45 turns. At a certain point, between turn 20 and 100, in other words around turn 65, you are no longer sustaining 1.5 ashigaru from the savings any more, and are relying on income stream. With the Market, you are sustaining 1.5 ashigaru from turn 65 to turn 100 and beyond.

So the way you can look at it, is with two provinces of one slot each, Market and Leased Land, by turn 65 you are able to sustain 1.5 ash without going into the red, but with both provinces having Markets, you are sustaining 3 ash units while staying in the black.

EDIT: Or, you could sustain the 1.5 ashigaru and be generating a surplus of around 100 koku from turn 65 to 100, so by turn 100, you have about 3,500 koku surplus, for the same unit upkeep with the two Markets versus Market + Leased Land. In other words, in such a scenario you will have made the equivalent surplus treasury of an entire Leased Land anyway by turn 110, with Market + Market, whereas with Lease + Market by turn 110 you exhausted the savings of Lease 45 turns prior, while still in need of finding the income stream for upkeep anyway.[/edit]

If you find yourself having to operate at a loss (drawing from savings) post turn 65 for a period, you could do 5 ash units for some turns in the later case, but only 3 in the former, and be at the same amount into the red, in other words, 40% less troops for the same dip into your savings.

So scaled up across the macro economy and empire, you are looking at significant results here later game, like the difference between fielding only 40 units of ash instead of 56. That is 16 extra units, practically a whole extra stack, for the same dip.

When hits come from RD betrayals, loss of ocean trade, etc. then being able to sustain more units from the income stream, and to get more return by dipping into your surplus treasury, becomes very crucial.

[Elitewrecker PT]

And then you stack the church chain on top of the growth from the markets and docks.

[Fadeway]

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

A Market theoretically breaks even at 12 to 28 turns at Normal Tax, just looking purely at the +200 taxable wealth, and depending on Admin Cost and whether Metsuke are present.

It breaks even with its own build cost, but not with the opportunity cost of building leased land which is what matters here.

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

But something people often forget about the Market is it also gives +5 Growth per turn, so in reality, the return on investment happens much faster.

Also, this growth not only grows tax directly over time, but indirectly, as it takes away much of the hit to Wealth that happens when you alternate to Very High or Extortionate Tax Rate, making switching to higher rates more efficient, especially as the campaign goes on in turn count.

Just to make sure we agree on the basics. Do you agree that you should be alternating to extortionate tax from turn one, wiping out the town wealth in the process? If you are arguing that the market just makes that process of wiping out take one or two turns longer, then yeah sure but its a token gain. If you are arguing that going for growth stacking long-term, I think that is a bad approach in the base campaign and I can expand on why if you want.

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

Getting 4,500 koku all at once definitely has merits, but it isn't something you can make a part of your infrastructure per se: as you said, it's a "building" you could only put in several places, and at a specific timing in the campaign, otherwise it's totally inefficient.

One of the biggest weaknesses of Leased Land is that you cannot use that slot for anything ever again, so combined with the -1 to Honor, there is some serious opportunity cost as well to go along with the 4,500 koku shot in the arm opportunity benefit.

Yes, what makes leased land bad is the -1 honor hit and the required interaction with christianity. I just disagree with all the people talking about long-term vs short-term. We as strategy players are drawn to growth strats and assume them to work best, but due to the campaign length and slow growth rates, going long-term is bad in the base game. The building is economically better even in the long-term if you take a realistic number for "long-term" like 80 turns.

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

There is a sort of curve that happens too with the income, aside from breaking even with costs. Late game, trade income usually breaks down from RD, and your domestic economy takes on new meaning. If you Leased like 3 provinces early game, you got 13,500 koku to your treasury, but that is all you got even if you are 100 turns in, or 150 turns in. There is a savings boost, but there was no income stream from Leasing.

A Market, by comparison, built around turn 20, will have made 2,430 actual profit around turn 100, so it looks like a loss; but it is profit from a continual stream, i.e. 41 koku a turn at 20% tax rate, so combined with the rest of that province's regular wealth, you're looking at upkeep for 1 to 3 ash units (say 1.5), or "half" to 1 samurai unit.

With the 4,500 shot in the arm, that is upkeep for 1.5 ashigaru unit (around 100 koku) for around 45 turns. At a certain point, between turn 20 and 100, in other words around turn 65, you are no longer sustaining 1.5 ashigaru from the savings any more, and are relying on income stream. With the Market, you are sustaining 1.5 ashigaru from turn 65 to turn 100 and beyond.

So the way you can look at it, is with two provinces of one slot each, Market and Leased Land, by turn 65 you are able to sustain 1.5 ash without going into the red, but with both provinces having Markets, you are sustaining 3 ash units while staying in the black.

EDIT: Or, you could sustain the 1.5 ashigaru and be generating a surplus of around 100 koku from turn 65 to 100, so by turn 100, you have about 3,500 koku surplus, for the same unit upkeep with the two Markets versus Market + Leased Land. In other words, in such a scenario you will have made the equivalent surplus treasury of an entire Leased Land anyway by turn 110, with Market + Market, whereas with Lease + Market by turn 110 you exhausted the savings of Lease 45 turns prior, while still in need of finding the income stream for upkeep anyway.[/edit]

If you find yourself having to operate at a loss (drawing from savings) post turn 65 for a period, you could do 5 ash units for some turns in the later case, but only 3 in the former, and be at the same amount into the red, in other words, 40% less troops for the same dip into your savings.

So scaled up across the macro economy and empire, you are looking at significant results here later game, like the difference between fielding only 40 units of ash instead of 56. That is 16 extra units, practically a whole extra stack, for the same dip.

When hits come from RD betrayals, loss of ocean trade, etc. then being able to sustain more units from the income stream, and to get more return by dipping into your surplus treasury, becomes very crucial.

Correct me if I am wrong, but my takeaway from reading this is that you agree that markets make less gold over 80 turns, and then make the case that you'd rather have 2500 over 80 turns than 4500 immediately?