Food trickle efficiency: Ice House vs Corral + Cows

[LienRag]

On 17/02/2026 at 10:52 AM, ffm2 said:

The cow production stops automatically if there are 50 cows.

That is actually very tedious.

It should halt, not stop (that is, restart as soon as one of these cows are slaughtered).

[LienRag]

8 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Boo.

In a23 there was a real decision between going for WTF, wonder (for extra pop), or champs. That’s is an objectively better setup that what exists now, which is only a choice between champs and WTF 

WTF ?

[Gurken Khan]

21 minutes ago, LienRag said:

That is actually very tedious.

Yeah. I eventually build the ice houses, but I don't corral or slaughter. I just felt the investments slowed me down and delayed my progress, and since I don't really need extra food...

 

1 minute ago, LienRag said:

WTF ?

Will To Fight.

Spoiler

 

 

[LetswaveaBook]

On 13/02/2026 at 8:51 PM, ffm2 said:

Ice House:      320 resources per 1 food/s
Corral + Cows:  164 resources per 1 food/s

What is ignored: You build an Ice house and it generates 30 food in the first minute after completion. If you build an corral, it needs 60 seconds time to train the cow before it generates the food. So that is an ¨extra cost¨ of 30 food. Also your corral calculation assumes 8 cows per corral, whereas in the start of the game, you cannot afford 8 cows and you will have at the early phase only one or two. So the calculation assumes that initial investment is not a burden.

So it is more like

1. For the first minute after construction: 100 wood invested+build time, 150 food invested (for cow recruitment), no tickle
2. After 1 minute: 100 wood invested+build time, 300 food invested, 1 food/s tickle.
3. So after 2 minutes you need to consider: I have thrown 300 food and gained 60 in return, do I need to put another 150 food in it? I ran a spreadsheet and only when you get your 6th cow, you have recovered the food you invested.

If you start your game with corrals+cows, you will see that the investment is not that good. A woman on a field does return her costs within 3 minutes. To be fair to the corral: goats give a better return on investment.

What I would suggest is added functionality for the Ice house: namely being a drop-off site for food in addition to the tickle.

[chrstgtr]

5 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

What I would suggest is added functionality for the Ice house: namely being a drop-off site for food in addition to the tickle.

This would make them more useful earlier. I like the suggestion. 

[Dakara]

lets go delete this persian building. Why a storage produce food.

why add eco feature to 220 pop civilization

[LetswaveaBook]

6 hours ago, Dakara said:

why add eco feature to 220 pop civilization

That is a question about faction identity.

Currently, Persians have 220 population and each unit has as much power the average population of any faction. So the solution would be simple: make Persian units to be in the end less valuable per unit than those of other factions.

But honestly, I feel that feels off topic to me. I hope the community can support creative ideas to give each faction its own style and then fix balance afterwards.

[ffm2]

On 23/02/2026 at 2:07 PM, Dakara said:

lets go delete this persian building. Why a storage produce food.

why add eco feature to 220 pop civilization

One could balance differently. Atm. the ice houses are useless. So they are the nerf themself. They are only a distraction.

Of course one would first make woman on fields as much as you can first until one resource runs out: population.

Here is a detailed analysis of Net Resources over Time when making one corral after the other. Each corral makes cows until 50 cows are reached:

[Edit: This is wrong! see later post]

Here is a detailed analysis of ice houses when they are produced one after the other. When the last ice house is made, the upgrade is invested:

Here they are directly compared:

One can see just how much the ice houses pale in comparison.

Then the next thing mentioned were the pigs. Here is a detailed analysis of pigs vs cows:

Since one could argue that one could go for pigs without going so much in a resource deficit, here is a comparison with setting a limit of -2000. So one would only make cows when the other cows gave a bit resources so this threshold isn't crossed:

One can see just how much of a long-term investment the cows are, but you really get something for your money in the end. Meanwhile with the corrals you go into a resource deficit for a bit over 9 minutes and then get a very little trickle. For the pigs i'd say just leave it. Don't waste actions. You'd never slaughter them anyway and replace with the better cow. For a competitive 1v1 I would only go for fields if it isn't a special map. Python file is there if I made a error. AI was used in the making of the script.

p_ice_vs_cor.py

Edited 3 hours ago by ffm2

[real_tabasco_sauce]

On 23/02/2026 at 6:07 AM, Dakara said:

lets go delete this persian building. Why a storage produce food.

why add eco feature to 220 pop civilization

The Persian's only major eco bonus is their team bonus, which makes production buildings cheaper. Having 220 max pop (and p3 trickle sources) doesn't contribute much to economy growth, just the maximum output after you have completed the exponential curve.

I like the idea of letting the ice houses double as a food drop-off point, since that would encourage early game usage. It would allow some wood savings while using stone that might otherwise go to barracks/eco techs.

[guerringuerrin]

@ffm2 do the goat graph pls 

[ffm2]

2 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

@ffm2 do the goat graph pls 

:S Man, you don't get my point, but ok. Before the next noob asks me to make sheeps too, where you can pay more and take longer to get the same trickle as the goats, here you go:

[Edit: This is wrong! see later post]

Edited 3 hours ago by ffm2

[Dakara]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The Persian's only major eco bonus is their team bonus, which makes production buildings cheaper. Having 220 max pop (and p3 trickle sources) doesn't contribute much to economy growth, just the maximum output after you have completed the exponential curve.

I like the idea of letting the ice houses double as a food drop-off point, since that would encourage early game usage. It would allow some wood savings while using stone that might otherwise go to barracks/eco techs.

Sure, but in an alternative game type like other map or long game. They'll have a much larger population available for the army; I don't see how they could lose against a 200-population civilization in the late game.

but it is not the topic, alright 

[guerringuerrin]

On 17/02/2026 at 2:54 PM, guerringuerrin said:

To use as trickle I think that Goats have the best ROI as they cost 35 and trickle 1 food per second. That represent the 2,85% of the investment while cows give 3 food but cost 150 food, which is only 2% of the total cost of the cow. Also they train faster so they start "trickling" before the cow so the total benefit should be a bit more.

Thanks and sorry for the inconvinience =) @ffm2 .  Then I guess I was wrong about this....   ^ 

At the risk of sounding silly, I have another question.
I ran a small visual experiment, and it looks like a Cow is providing 3 food roughly every ~5 seconds, not every 3 seconds.
The same seems to apply to other animals — I see the resource update about every ~5 seconds, which would be around 0.6 food per second instead of 1.
Unless this is related to some delay in the GUI update or something similar.
I know those 5 seconds might be slightly off due to my slow reaction time, but I don’t think I was off by as much as 2 seconds. Maybe every 4 seconds?

Slap me if needed
 

 

 

[ffm2]

lol, I think your right. I thought I did this for some minutes and divided by that time to reduce the error of measuring one small time interval. Needs a revision, but first I'll check the code where the time interval really is handled. Btw. maybe it should be documented XD

[ffm2]

Here it is:

binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/template_structure_resource_corral.xml

...
  <ResourceTrickle>
    <Rates>
      <food>0</food>
    </Rates>
    <Interval>5000</Interval>
  </ResourceTrickle>
...

[ffm2]

Corrected plots:

p_ice_vs_cor.py

Edited 3 hours ago by ffm2

[guerringuerrin]

2 hours ago, ffm2 said:

lol, I think your right. I thought I did this for some minutes and divided by that time to reduce the error of measuring one small time interval. Needs a revision, but first I'll check the code where the time interval really is handled. Btw. maybe it should be documented XD

 

2 hours ago, ffm2 said:

Corrected plots:

p_ice_vs_cor.py 13.55 kB · 1 download

Glad it helped 

 

Edited 1 hour ago by guerringuerrin