Is there a problem with agriculture and supplies ?

[chong.ong]

Hi ! I only recently started playing the game, and I'm rather puzzled by agriculture and supplies.

1) If a person can use a merchant to buy 7 supplies for 1 gold, why does the the city income suggest a nearly 1-1 relationship between supply income and gold income ? It seems that it is pointless to raise agriculture (and much better to build up commerce).

2) Secondly, when I send armies to fight, I might check (in city info) that supplies income is greater than supply expenditure. But somehow, my city's supplies instead are going down quickly. How does that work ?

Thanks !

[Gray Riders]

1: The balance does seem a bit off; I suppose merchants being only available randomly is a factor but I think they need to look at income again.
It does take longer to go from level 2 to level 3 than 1 to 2 so there is reason to upgrade agriculture, though I consider it the lowest priority of the three.

2: It shows you how many supplies are used per turn, but income is per month. Income needs to be 3 times expenditure to show a profit.

[chong.ong]

Originally posted by Gray Riders:

1: The balance does seem a bit off; I suppose merchants being only available randomly is a factor but I think they need to look at income again.
It does take longer to go from level 2 to level 3 than 1 to 2 so there is reason to upgrade agriculture, though I consider it the lowest priority of the three.

2: It shows you how many supplies are used per turn, but income is per month. Income needs to be 3 times expenditure to show a profit.

Thanks for the info (I did some more testing as well - the game looks totally stuffed).

With gold, let's say the city has 2000 gold income and 1200 gold expenses.

If at the start it is 10,000 gold (Early Jan)
Mid Jan would be 10,000 - (1200)/3 =9600
Late Jan would be 9600 - (1200)/3 = 9200
Early Feb would be 9200 + 2000 - (1200)/3 = 10800

So the calculation for gold looks correct.


The calculations for supplies totally doesn't make any sense at all. If it shows 3000 supply income and 500 supply expenses:

It subtracts 500 each turn, which is totally rubbish. But then it does a weird calculation for adding (which doesn't make any sense) ... This calculation is still close to 1-1 gold income to supplies income.

If Koei wants to subtract supplies at 3 times the rate of gold (plus allow players to buy at 7 supplies to 1 gold), then clearly they need to increase supply income.

I can't believe Koei hasn't fixed this clear blunder. It results in cities with enormous amounts of gold (even with almost no development) but no supplies .... And thus a player should just develop commerce and buy supplies at the merchant.

[MaChao]

I haven't made hard calculations myself, but i also had drastic fluctuations in supplies as well.
I played the YT scenario with the southern most force (what's his name? Something Xie?) because i just wanted to learn the city building aspects without getting hassled too much.

I stuck with the starting city, conquered all its cores and exclusively developed agriculture.

Result:
City capped at 50k soldiers, had an abundance of gold (several 100k) but ran out of supplies even though statistically, supply / demand should have been balanced out (had no drought or good harvests).

As i mentioned in other threads, the more i play, the more i feel that the whole facility improvement system is entirely borked.
It takes too long to achieve something, it takes way too much manpower to do so and the results are incredibly opaque.

[chong.ong]

Originally posted by MaChao:

City capped at 50k soldiers, had an abundance of gold (several 100k) but ran out of supplies even though statistically, supply / demand should have been balanced out (had no drought or good harvests).

As i mentioned in other threads, the more i play, the more i feel that the whole facility improvement system is entirely borked.
It takes too long to achieve something, it takes way too much manpower to do so and the results are incredibly opaque.

I really don't understand how the issue with the gold & supplies hasn't been fixed yet. Even after playing the game for a relatively short time, it is clear the system is stuffed.

The game should either:
1) Option 1: Deduct supplies correctly (like gold).
1500 expenditure means 1500 per month, which is 500 per turn. Supplies should then be worth more than e.g. 1 gold = 7 supplies.

2) Option 2: Greatly increase supply.

Furthermore, they also need to tune gold income (it is way too much even at level 1 commerce).

Without either of the two options being implemented, it is pointless developing agriculture. A player should just focus on commerce and buy food.

[MaChao]

Imo, gold is more or less appropriate, considering that most requests cost a fair mount.
I rarely found myself having "too much" gold, there's always ways to spend it really.

The supply bit however, that's really an issue.
Again, not tested myself, but i could also imagine that individual hexes and on duty (doing everything besides governing) could play into it.

In the past, active units carried supplies with them directly. Now, it's done directly from your stockpile to your units via colored hexes (supply lines).
Maybe the expenditure fluctuates due to officer activities?
Officer + Troops + X hexes away = increase in expenditure?
Maybe even city searches and co play into it without being directly accounted for in the statistical overview?

This could be tested by a completely idle force (again, YT scenario with southern most force).
If doing nothing at all results in proper supply expenditure, it would mean actions require an undocumented amount of extra resources.
Which, frankly, would be utterly ridiculous...

All in all, the whole city management feels incredibly off.
Either the games rules are way too opaque and i'm just not getting it (which is certainly possible) or they severely botched the balancing.

[korsobar]

Originally posted by MaChao:

Officer + Troops + X hexes away = increase in expenditure?

Not sure about the rest, but this is from the manual "If the supply lines grow too long or there are areas that slow down movement along the route, the amount of supplies the unit will consume will increase."

Also, I thought I would mention that merchants are available randomly and consume an order and require an officer. Maybe they thought of that as a balancing effect?

It is more reliable to move supplies from a rear city to a frontline one via transport than to gamble on a merchant being available. I get the impression they wanted transport to be a big part of the strategy.

[さまよう侍]

I have played 300+ hours and the only thing I develop is Commerce on the province that I manually control. The trade ratio for Gold:Supply can range from 10:20 to 10:80.

Troops incoming will naturally comes from your high STR Officer that you put in Recruit slot.

If you deploy any Officer that is assigned to Recruit or Training Slot, that Officer will not do those Internal Affair job. The Officer that is assigned town development is cut in half(roughly)

Here are rough stats effect; you can check with site link below:
LEA: affect your troops power and supply consumption(I think)
STR: affect Duel and Tactics
INT: affect Tactics and Search
POL: affect Search, town Order if assigned to a town.
CHR: affect land influence/control growth, also affect Officer recruitment.


This site has good basic info in Japanese
https://syoyougame.jp/sangokushi14

[chong.ong]

Originally posted by さまよう侍:

I have played 300+ hours and the only thing I develop is Commerce on the province that I manually control. The trade ratio for Gold:Supply can range from 10:20 to 10:80.

Thanks for the feedback. It's astonishing how Koei made such a simple blunder and still hasn't fixed this yet.

I recall RTK XI (which is similar) had a fairly reasonable ratio of Gold income & Supply income. I remember that by building the cities approximately evenly (farms & granaries, markets & mints), this resulted in a suitable spread. I actually made a rule for myself in RTK XI not to use merchants, so that it would be more challenging.

It is quite ridiculous how Koei totally stuffed the income balance up for RTK 14.

[ickabod27]

I determined that I am just going to work on commerce and then buy as much as I can when merchants show up.

[cifrelettere]

Yeah, I think supply prices need to double right now. The supply system itself works well, but since gold accumulates as a much higher rate than supplies it results in mainly using merchants as a source of supply rather than developing agriculture.