Lv2 Coal Mine?

[Jins]

Six lv 1 Coal Mine are not enough. Many people will use Choking plant. I have seen high lv players using six lv 1 Coal Mine + Fourteen lv 3 choking plant. However, not many people use lv 2 Coal mine.

Before we run into other reasons behind this scenario, I want to figure out:
if there is any advantage to use lv 2 Coal Mine Only over lv 3 Choking plant Only.


Case A: Six lv 2 Coal Mine
Six lv 2 Coal Mine produce 12 Coal per 1.5 minutes = 24 Coal per 3 minutes.
That's equivalent to Eight lv 3 Choking Plant: 24 Coal per 3 minutes.

Case B: Eight lv 3 Choking Plant

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Now, let's see how many building we need to support these two cases.

Case A: Six lv 2 Coal Mine

Since we are considering if Coal Mine should be upgraded or not, we are going to ignore the cost of Coal Mine. In fact, we are just going to consider the Upgrade Cost.

How long does a Coal Mine last?

At lv 2, Coal Mine should be run out in 2900 Coal /2 Coal /1.5 production time (min) = 966.67 min.

For the total Upgrade Cost: You will need 300 Tool x 6 = 1800 Tool per 966.67 min.



How many supporting buildings we need?

A lv 3 Tool-maker generate 3 tool per 3 minutes. In 966.67 minutes, a lv 3 Tool-maker generate 966.67 tool.
That's a 1:1 ratio for Lv2 Coal Mine : Lv 3 Tool Maker; One Lv 3 Tool Maker also require One Lv 3 Copper Smith
Thus, Six lv 2 Coal Mines requires Twelve Buildings to support at minimum if you purchase Copper Ore.



Let's see if you are not purchasing Copper Ore, how many more building you need?

In order to support Six Lv 3 Copper Smith, you will need 9 Copper Ore per 3 minutes.
Six lv 1 Copper Mine produce 6 Copper ore per 2 minutes = 9 Copper ore per 3 minutes.
or
Three lv 2 Copper Mine produce 6 copper ore per 2 minutes = 9 Copper Ore per 3 minutes; with a cost of 150 tool, but 150 tool is so little that I think this is negligible.

IMPORTANT: However, you also need to reduce the total coal production rate by 9 Coal per 3 minutes.

Thus, we can conclude that, Case A: Six lv 2 Coal Mine produce 15 Coal per 3 minutes, if you don't buy any materials; total cost of building licence: 21 Building license.

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Now, let's look at:
Case B: Eight lv 3 Choking Plant
We are going to ignore the cost of this production chain because they stay permanent. So, their cost become negligible in long run.
In fact, we are just going to look at how much building licences are used.

How many supporting building we need?

Every Two lv 3 Choking Plant requires Two lv 3 Fir wood Cutter, Three lv 3 Fir wood Forester

For Eight lv 3 Choking Plant, we need Eight lv 3 Fir Wood Cutter, Twelve lv 3 Fir wood Forester

Total Cost is: 28 Building License.

Thus, we can conclude that, Case B: Eight lv 3 Choking Plant produce 24 Coal per 3 minutes, if you don't buy any materials; total cost of building licence: 28 Building license.

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Let's normalize the calculation results of Case A and Case B

24 x Six lv 2 Coal Mine = 360 Coal per 3 minutes, cost 504 building licence

15 x Eight lv 3 Choking Plant = 360 Coal per 3 minutes, cost 420 building licence

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Assuming I didn't make any mistake in the calculation, it's not worthwhile to upgrade Coal Mine to lv 2 at all.
lv 3 Choking Plant + Six lv 1 Coal Mine are the most-building-licence-efficient (is this even a word ?!)

Also, not to forget mentioning another main reason for not going lv 2 Coal Mine: Geologist takes a long time for Coal.
Unless you online 24-7......you are going to have a hard time to keep up Coal Mine production + Iron Mine production + Marble Production + Copper Production, etc


P.S. Is the color function not working? Or is that just google chrome?

[Dilbe]

I stoped reading after "At lv 2, Coal Mine should be run out in 2900 Coal /2 Coal /1.5 production time (min) = 966.67 min.", because a level 2 coal mine with 2900 coal runs out after (2900 / 2)*1.5 = 2175 minutes. Wich means all calculations below that are also wrong.

But a level 2 coal mine can be worth it if you're active enough to keep them running as much as possible. The level 2 coal mine can be around 20% more effective. Theorectically

[Tycho91]

I'm sorry but your calculations are WAY off.
Here are my calculations (in short):

6 lvl 2 Coal Mines


Needed for 6 lvl 2 coal mines and 1800 tools//Needed/2175min///Needed/2175min//Production/2175min//Required Time//Profit/2175min

6x lvl 2 Coal mine//0//0//17400//1,5 min//15588//(coal for copper smelter has been deducted)
1x lvl 3 Copper mine//0//0//2175//3min//363
1 x lvl 3 Copper Smelter + 1 lvl 2 coppersmelter//1812//1812//1812//6min//0
1x Lvl 3 toolmaker + 1 lvl 2 toolmaker//1812 Bronze//0//1812//6min//12



11 building licenses needed





Well, you already need 8 licenses for the coking plants alone ...



So... lvl 2 coal plants win.

[reggie]

Except if you want to buff then lvl 2 coalmine gives more extra coal then a lvl 3 coalplant.20 per hour to be exact. Buff 6 of those for 6 hours and you get an extra 720 coal every 6 hours. Could be important if you need the coal bad.
Ofcourse itll cost you buff resources and tools. Me i dont even have time to sell the tools i dont use so for me its easier to just use m.
If you have time to spend in trade its prob easier to just buy extra coal.

[Blebekblebek]

use coal mine as a reserve, not primary coal production

also calculation is not including HWP, Marble, and Tools production.
if you put them in the list, everything is almost even, for short term.
long term, I still prefer cooking plant

it's cheap, unlimited renewable non hassle resource

[Ferro219]

If you include absolutely everything, including planting the fir/hardwood trees, building copper mines for tools... then t3 choking plants win if it comes to efficient license usage from both t1 and t2 coal mines.
Coal mines on the other hand can provide a good burst when you need it.

[Dilbe]

If you include absolutely everything, including planting the fir/hardwood trees, building copper mines for tools... then t3 choking plants win if it comes to efficient license usage from both t1 and t2 coal mines.
Coal mines on the other hand can provide a good burst when you need it.
This is not true. If you include everything, then the level 1 and 2 coal mines both give more coal per licence. But i don't do that, because you need to be realy active for that to work, otherwise the coal mines have to much down time between builds.

[MrH4m]

I have no idea what following words means :-o

1) choking / cooking plants
2) level 1 coal mine
3) level 2 coal mine
4) level 3 coal mine
5) non buffed
6) hassle

I do see, from time to time, lvl 1/2/3 coal mines on my map but they magically disappear after 15-25 minutes.

I am writing this only because, after 3 weeks now, I saw 4k coal in my store house. That never happened before :-o

That was puzzling, I never had below 10-15k coal until now :o

So I chit chatted with one of my many friends here and while doing that, traded with him my xbows for 10.000 coal so I do not have to look at coal in my store house below 14.000 for the next few weeks / months. That cost me around 150 xbows.

On the other hand, some one mentioned that +20/+30/+40 licenses for whole chain of fir wood production to keep those cooking plants (again, that unknown word) going is cheap?

If wasting 40 licenses is cheap then all humans use water for breathing. And my bad jokes are actually good ones.

p.s.
At this moment, I have 11 bronze smelters, 8 toolmakers, 2x iron smelters, 2x coinage, 3x gold smelters, 4x BS smith, 1x IS smith, 1x SS smith, 1x steel smelter.

[Drusek]

In my magic excel where everything is taken into consideration the coal from mines is always cheaper* to make than from coking plants. Even coal from lvl 2 mine vs coal from lvl 5 coking chain. *(cheaper doesn't always mean faster - I take licenses and time to make as a base cost).
Simple: you make more coal from 6 lvl 2 mines than from 7 lvl 5 coking chain (and it's not that expensive to rebuild mines) : 24 vs 10 /3min

[MrH4m]

I just had to come back and comment my very own reply (!).

I never said, and I would never dare to say, that my tactic is the best possible there is. Even now, as I am writing this, there are few cities (not many) that I am privileged to see and that are lightning years away from the tactic which I use - focusing on coal mines, bronze smelters, tools etc.

Took me way too much time to construct my city, as it is now, and I am waaay too lazy to do it all over again. It would take me weeks for re-construction.

My ideas that I used to built this city, which you can see if you have me on friend list, are like cats compared to tigers when it comes to some ideas that I hear from other players. At least, that is how I see it. But... on the other hand, I have a feeling that I am in nano technology age while most of you still struggle in stone age.

Again, I hate to force my ideas or type of play to any of you guys there and I try not to. My only advice (jeah, I'm trying to keep away from that also lol - giving advices when not asked) for you all is not to be afraid when it comes to testing ideas for your city and not be afraid when 2/5/9/253 buildings are needed to be razed. If you think that you can "pull it off" - there is a 95% that you can.

Keep in mind, though, that 73.56% of all the statistics is completely made up.

Cheers,

Ham

[Dilbe]

In my magic excel where everything is taken into consideration the coal from mines is always cheaper* to make than from coking plants. Even coal from lvl 2 mine vs coal from lvl 5 coking chain. *(cheaper doesn't always mean faster - I take licenses and time to make as a base cost).
Simple: you make more coal from 6 lvl 2 mines than from 7 lvl 5 coking chain (and it's not that expensive to rebuild mines) : 24 vs 10 /3min
This is not ture, a level 5 cooking plant needs 126 seconds of licences per coal it makes (this one is easy to calculte: 3,5 licences to keep the chain running devided by 5 coal every 3 minutes times 180 seconds = 126 seconds). The level 3 chain will need around 210 seconds of licences per coal.

While a level 1 coal mine will need around 158 seconds of licences per coal. This one is very difficult to calculate, so i just used the data from http://www.siedlertools.de/wiki/Kohlemine_versus_K%C3%B6hlerei
The level 2 coal mine will need around 173 seconds of licences per coal.
These numbers for the coal mine assume the mine is up 100% of the time (no build time and no geologist time) and that it is not torn down when low.

If you assume you tear every coal mine down when it has 1 or 2 coal left, then it'll come down to around 142 seconds of licences per coal for both level 1 and level 2 coal mines.

All the calculations above ignore the travel times.

[PapiFiveNine]

My only question here would be why do people bother smelting iron/steel and making swords out of them. 2 steel swords = 64 coal, 32iron when broken down into pieces. That means that 200 steel swords (which are like ~170 coins roughly atm) equal 6400 coal (which can be easily sold for 20 coins per stack) and 3200 iron (40gc+). I do not see a profit, but then again maybe coal and iron are much much cheaper on newfoundland and swords much much more expensive.

Another example would be iron bars. Stack of iron bars ~100gc = 4800coal/3200iron + the production time (almost forgot). Do the math.

P.S. I only make bronze swords/tools and same as someone here mentioned im not bothering myself with coking plants.

[Keylock32]

because eventually you'll need it, for example you won't even kill chuck norris with gazillion zerg of recruits.

there's always pro and cons this kind comparison isn't going nowhere, people had their own gameplay style.

PS: I don't even make any swords.

[MrH4m]

....equal 6400 coal (which can be easily sold for 20 coins per stack)...

Another example would be iron bars. Stack of iron bars ~100gc = 4800coal/3200iron + the production time (almost forgot). Do the math.

Feel free to check prices on this server - there is no chance, ever, that you will sell 400 coal for 20 gc here.

Our market Bible (http://bit.ly/ttbible)

But that does not really matter. What matter is time.

I will convert my 400 steel, in 30 minutes, for any other resource that I need (choose 3 random of them) - in amount that I, mostly, need at that moment.

How much time will I need to convert 20k coal on trade tab with profit that I seek?

[Tierarzt]

Feel free to check prices on this server - there is no chance, ever, that you will sell 400 coal for 20 gc here.
How wrong you are!!

[PapiFiveNine]

Feel free to check prices on this server - there is no chance, ever, that you will sell 400 coal for 20 gc here.

Our market Bible (http://bit.ly/ttbible)

But that does not really matter. What matter is time.

I will convert my 400 steel, in 30 minutes, for any other resource that I need (choose 3 random of them) - in amount that I, mostly, need at that moment.

How much time will I need to convert 20k coal on trade tab with profit that I seek?

Yea, 20k coal and 400 steel is just as equal (sarcasm). The time it takes me to trade coal (which everyone needs, coz they make swords just like you), is the time it takes you to make those swords/steel and i'll earn more. And not because coal is more expensive on northisle, because prices for both are proportionally higher. I dont mind taking my time to trade, the game isnt supposed to be rushed...

[Bloodmane]

What does the graphics for the coal deposit look like???????????????