Fields vs Corrals

[DesertRose]

What's the advantage of Fields over Corrals?

1 cavalry units gathers Food about 7 times faster than fully upgraded 5-man Fields. Or about 3.5 times as fast if you consider the cost of the animal.

If we scale that up:

20 cavalry units, 15 Corrals, Stockbreeding

-> 2000 Food, 1000 Wood + 1500 Wood + 100 Food 

-> 2100 Food, 2500 Wood

70 civilians, 12 Farms, Iron Plow, Gather Training, Fertilizer

-> 3500 Food + 1200 Wood + 900 Wood, 600 Metal

-> 3500 Food, 2100 Wood, 600 Metal

 

So the Corral setup costs less overall resources, the units are trained faster, you save 50 pop, the buildings take almost the same time to be build, Corrals take up less space, cavalry is harder to raid than civilians, and you can slowly garrison cattle into Corrals and get an even bigger advantage.

Why should you use Fields instead?

[Deicide4u]

Micro.

Your APM is better spent elsewhere.

[Tapothei]

30 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

Why should you use Fields instead?

My playstyle, I go plow some veggies you go milking cows its not my problem. 
Plus when I do want to corral its usually late game type of thing slowly transitioning as my food is 10k and my citizen goes missing over time... 

Edited 10 hours ago by Tapothei

[Arup]

corrals needs food before generating any meaningful amount :/

[guerringuerrin]

 

@DesertRose You might find this interesting

 

 

[ffm2]

Yeah, if I have some time, I could update it or anyone with the script and a LLM. Just describe the stats in full detail. But to me this seem to be too obvious to put in that effort of typing the stats and debug it.

First comes the berrys, then hunt/fish, then transition to fields.

Corrals with slaughtering seems not to be the meta atm.. In earlier alphas I liked to have corrals, a temple nearby, wounded cav could work and heal by aura. But it was never a question of either farm + upgrades or corrals. Farms are a must. ... (well one exception was survival of the fittest were there were once no farms, but corrals)

[DesertRose]

Interesting. 

Seems if you want to use Corrals for passive income the most efficient strategy is build one Corral, slowly fill it up with Goats as they recuperate their investment the fastest, then build another Corral until you have 6-7.

If you only produce from 1 Corral you are never more than -100 Food and are in the positives after 5 minutes.

If you also produce from full Corrals and the newly build one you also never more than -100 Food but in the positive after 6 minutes.

If you want even more passive food income you start to replace Goats with Cows.

x

If you use Corrals for active Food collection it is annoying that the auto-queue is stopped after hitting 50 cattle. Otherwise you could set your Corrals to 2 batch of Cows and have 2 cavalry constantly gather them without any need for micro. You are in the positives after about 140 seconds.

In the late game it seems to be really worth it as for every Corral and 2 cavalry you can delete 12 farmers have about the same food production.

x

Now that I think about it maybe you can transition from berries to Corrals. Build a Corral, have it auto-queue Goats or Sheeps. In batches if you have the resources for it. Reduce the batch sizes of Civilians for it. You will have less Civilians overall but as 2 hunters gather as fast as 5 farmers (or 4 with the first upgrade) you still have the stronger eco.

 

0AD_Fields_vs_Corrals.ods

Edited 1 hour ago by DesertRose

[guerringuerrin]

12 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

In the late game it seems to be really worth it as for every Corral and 2 cavalry you can delete 12 farmers have about the same food production.

indeed this is somewhat a strategy in mid/late games. unfortunetly is not very seen these days