hello ladies and gentlemen Spirit of the
law here in this video I'm going to be
looking at the tradeoff uh between
building new Lumber camps and just
leaving the old ones now we all know
that if you only build one Lumber camp
in the whole game your villagers are
going to end up walking a really long
distance however we also know that if
you build a new Lumber camp for every
tree you cut down in the end you're
going to end up with no wood of course
the lumber Camp is 100 Wood and a tree
gives you 100 Wood so really what's that
Ideal Balance there now I've decided
that we're actually going to answer this
mathematically and I've designed an
experiment to test it and we are going
to see how big of a deal are these new
camps and is it something that you
should really be paying attention to so
let's take a
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look
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okay guys so just to point out the
conditions of this experiment first of
all uh this is in the Dark Age this is
not with a civilization that has any
kind of wood cutting bonus like the
Kelts we are also uh not really
measuring the overcrowding effect that
happens when there's a lot of villagers
around uh the lumber Camp versus the
actual distance they walk we're putting
those together so we're going to have 15
villagers here and one Lumber camp in
the one group in the control group and
in the other group we're going to be
running the same experiment with the
same 15 villagers however I'm actually
going to be refreshing the lumber camps
as they cut and we're going to see at
the end of the day which of those two
has more wood in total what I want to
know is whether the distance really
matters uh or if that there's like a
trade-off that it ends up all being the
same because it costs you the extra wood
and the extra time to make the lumber
camp and does that completely balance
out with the extra efficiency of having
your villagers not have to walk as
far
every 2 minutes I wrote down how much
wood there was in total collected so far
I put time on the x-axis and the amount
Total Wood at that point on the y- AIS
as we can see as I graph the
relationship is that the rate slows down
over time and we see that as a
flattening out of the graph so what that
tells us is that it's becoming less
efficient and that really fast
collection rate that was happening at
the beginning is no longer keeping up
once they have to walk a long ways that
makes sense and that's very intuitive
because um as they're walking and
they're delivering the wood from a long
ways away that's all time that they're
not actually cutting so that's going to
slow down that overall collection
rate so I added a trend line to the
graph and I did a little bit of calculus
on it and uh don't worry nothing too
intense and what it means is that um if
I put in different points for the time I
can tell roughly how quickly it was that
the 15 Villages were collecting the wood
for instance at Time Zero they began
collecting wood at 536
Uh Wood per minute for all 15 villagers
after 20 minutes that was down to just
under 400 wood per minute by 40 minutes
that was down to about 250 and by 60
minutes so after 1 hour of just running
on that same Lumber Camp they were down
to about 100 Wood per minute so what
this tells us is uh there is definitely
a cost to um and quite a significant
cost uh to just leaving the lumber camp
and letting your villagers walk
forever then I repeated the experiment
and this time um tried to build more
lumber camps in order to minimize that
travel distance so the first time that I
add another Lumber Camp I split it and
so that there were two different Lumber
camps uh in order to prevent a little
bit of that overcrowding and then as
time went I just continually added more
and more and I found some interesting
results so um first of all noticing that
whenever I built a lumber Camp there
that was some waste of time and what
happened is it not only cost 100 Wood to
make it but it was also the villagers
had to stop what they were doing to
build it and then even after that
there's a little bit of confusion
between the villagers at after they
built it and they were kind of running
into each other as they tried to find a
new tree to cut so there is actually a
significant cost to building a lumber
camp that being said the payoff is
definitely that you can maintain the
same collection rate of about 500 um or
basically just under what the initial
rate is cuz there is some loss over time
with um the wood building the new ones
but what it does mean is you can
maintain that steady rate and what I
wanted to know is where is that point
and what I found was at about 24 to 26
minutes in game if you have the 15
villagers collecting that's when the
benefit of moving the large Lumber camps
actually starts to exceed the penalty
for not building them and that's uh when
it does become important that you want
to build a new Lumber camp that being
said over micromanagement actually slows
down the rate and up until that point uh
building new Lumber camps is actually
slowing down uh your wood collection
overall um because of the waste of time
with the Villagers this is a picture of
what it looks like roughly when that
time has come that you should build a
new Lumber Camp before this it's not
actually in your best interest to build
a new one and after this you're wasting
a lot of time with the Villagers walking
around so around that 20 minute Mark
seems to be uh the ideal place that you
would want to destroy that old one and
build a new one um a little bit closer
so they don't have to walk as far so
this is going to be kind of uh for me
anyway I'm quite happy with this result
and uh now I know so this is roughly
what it looks like when I should be
building a new one um it does kind of it
show I was actually surprised with the
effect it shows that it is an important
thing to keep an eye on and I know
you're doing a million other things at
the same time in this game but it does
actually end up being one of those
things that it's definitely worth uh
noticing and keeping an eye on so I hope
this has been helpful to you and your
game and maybe it confirmed what you
thought and maybe you're a little bit
surprised by it uh leave a like if uh if
you might have learned something from
this and leave a comment if you have any
other uh any other suggestions of kind
of interesting things that you've always
kind of wondered about the game yeah so
I'm Spirit of the law and I'll be coming
up with you with more Age of Empires
videos on every Friday and this is just
kind of an extra one I decided to throw
in there um thanks for watching and I'll
see you next
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time