Still trying to figure out Persian Positions
UPDATING the first post with my clarification I posted further down the thread:
I feel a need to clarify the point of my post.
I do not believe the PP system is broken, to the contrary I believe it works exactly as the Dev's have intended.
I just wanted to voice publicly, a final acknowledgement to myself, that playing PP is a net loss activity. I really wanted to believe you could at least break even, but that is not the case. Granted there were a few payouts that had just a little gain over the loss it took to earn them, but most payouts definitely were worth less the the value of troops lost.
But I think this is by design. If the system ever gave out more then it took, in theory you could continually grow without having to put anything additional in...my hope and error was thinking you could break even, but I suspect there is always a 10-5% loss, on average. Even when you get that awesome big payout ("impressive rewards" as Dmitri stated)...If you added up all your partial payouts, and tallied all your losses to get to that point, generally you still walked away with less than what you put in, if only slightly, but just enough to maintain the illusion that you are gaining.
I also have to comment on the "convert troops" proposition that always gets mentioned. In truth, it is generally only useful for lower level players who do not have higher agreements signed and struggle with grain. In that instance, converting low to higher tier troops is useful. The truth is that you are better off just building the higher tier troops and not converting the lower troops to them. At higher gaming levels, its nice to have loads of lights and heavies around because if the enemy is stacked with Phalanx and Cav def, nothing is more satisfying then hitting them with a ton of LIGHTS and watching the def suffer a massive inefficiency. Some people think, "yeah well you build lights faster than Cavs!" Not really true, if you baseline everything, all Offensive units build roughly 8 off points per minute (some 7.96), so you build OFF stats the same if you are building Agema or swords. The only benefit of swords over agema is they are cheaper in res units, BUT if you invest them in PP, that is very inefficient because swords only invest 60 res units per minute, where as Promachos invest 93 res units per minute, and Agema 115.6. So its actually inefficient to use lights and heavies to invest in PP for higher tier units because they invest at a much lower rate (res per build minute), requiring a lot more boosts. Add to that the 5-10% loss you take in the conversion..you may as well build the swords and use them to hit cities and pantheons stacked with Thureos and M. pelts instead. It is a more efficient use of their value. One can argue that you can at least use the light and heavy build ques, in parallel to your Phalxn and Cavs to add to your high level troops in PP, that is true, its inefficient, but true.
No, I think the only value of PP is that its a lower cost method of building your army, then just boosting or buying units. Because every unit you send to die, gets added to your bank, (as opposed to lost permanently when doing PVP battles). And once added to the bank, eventually in a payout you will get them back. BUT then you can revive that unit at a 50% discount (or 75% with the healer), and voila, you are adding to your army at a (slightly less due to the house PP losses) than 50 (or 75)% discount. That is much cheaper than buying the units you want, and much faster then boosting the builds. This is the real value of PP. BUT ONLY IF YOU ARE REVIVING UNITS you send to die. IF you never revive units you send to PP to die, then you are gaining nothing and eventually will lose your army, because with every position cleared, its lost a little value to the house. (PS: TIP, the best units to use in PP and revive, if you are using the Res unit system to track PP, are the S. PIke, GS Warrior and Carthagian horsemen, my opinion anyway, based soley on known math...who knows what the PP algorithm does in the background...., As PAR1 stated, take nothing for granted).
ORIGINAL FIRST POST:
After years of tracking this system..it still seems like an overall loss system.
Over the last 200+ positions I have cleared, and tracking nearly every single unit lost and gained.....I am now, in the whole, at a cumulative loss of 139,417,560 resource units. Meaning every big payout, (and small payouts combined) is usually worth a few million less in resource units than what I lost to get it back. The bank never gives, it may loan, but you always pay more back then you'll ever get out.
I'm becoming a firm believer that there is nothing to be gained playing persian positions other than general gear, scrolls, and the fact that if you play it and revive your troops at 50% (or 75%), it is cheaper to build your army than buying the troops outright, even with the constant bleed of resource units with each payout.
I never believed you could get ahead playing persian positions, but now I do not think you can even break even with persian positions anymore.
