The only good news from this test in terms of consistency is that combinations of upgrades garner you the same benefit no matter what order you perform them in.
Other then that, it is inexplicable how these work. The benefit is that you can be pragmatic and just use the knowledge to your own end, regardless of how it works. Note that the techs listed only describe their functionality to gold gather rates.
If you want to know how these results were found out, just continue reading past Test Results.
TEST RESULTS:
Upgrade one: Book of Thoth or Pick Axe: Irrelevant. You will gain 11.7% over the base rate no matter which you choose first.
Upgrade two: If you have the Book of Thoth and upgrade to Pick Axe you will gain an additional 12.9% over the last upgrade, for a total bonus over the base rate of 31.9%. Similarly, if you start with the Pick Axe and upgrade to the Book of Thoth you will gain 12.9% and your total bonus will be 31.9%.
However, if you upgrade from the Pick Axe to the Shaft Axe, you will have an increase of 19.7% from Pick Axe alone. This translates to a total gain over the base rate of 40.4% with just these two upgrades.
Upgrade three: If you have Pick Axe and Shaft Axe, and upgrade to Book, your gain will be nothing. That's right. Zilch. Thx for wasting my wood and favour.
If you have Pick Axe and Shaft Axe and upgrade to Quarry, you will gain 4.5% over Pick & Shaft alone. This raises your total benefit to 46.8% over base.
If you have Pick Axe and the Book of Thoth, if you upgrade to Shaft Axe, you will gain 6.6% and a total of 40.7% overall. As you can see this is the exact same gain you'd have if you didn't research the Book of Thoth at all. What's interesting here though is that it is only when you have Pick and Shaft does Book of Thoth give you nothing. If you have the Book of Thoth first, pick axe gives you a 12.9% gain. Then shaft gives you 6.6%. Anyone looking at this from this point of view would then (incorrectly) assume that the Book of Thoth is good, Pick Axe is great, and that Shaft Axe is bad. Thus, Book of Thoth researched 1st or 2nd arbitrarily breaks up the gains that Plow and Shaft give you. Bleh to the Book of Thoth.
Upgrade four: No matter how you arrive at this point, your gains will be 60% overall from the base. Book of Thoth plays games here as well.
For example, if you upgrade from Pick, to Shaft, to Quarry, you will be very disappointed by Quarry's 80% dropoff from Shaft gains. (19.7% to 4.5% respectively). Course then, if you upgrade to Sacreds from Pick & Shaft you would get zero, but most people would not know that. The funny thing is is that with these 3, Book of Thoth will give you a 9% increase, which most people would not think is bad. (and it isnt really)
If you always naturally went Pick, Book, Shaft (in any order really) Quarry would seem great. Giving 14% bonus to the cumulative gain of the previous three.
Conclusion:
Luckily the conclusion is far more simple than the numbers:
Pick Axe and Shaft Axe are great. The 20% bonus of Shaft Axe is double what is listed, and due to its cumulative effect, will net you an extra 28% over the base amount versus vs Pick alone. If you dont choose Thoth as a Mythic Age God, upgrading to Quarry is hardly worthwhile. 4.5% bonus is pretty pathetic considering its cost.
If you choose Thoth, you have two choices. Either upgrade just Pick and Shaft (for a very inexpensive 40% boost over base) or upgrade all 4. The last two are by far the most expensive and net an overall increase over base of 20%, but it is certainly better than any combination of 3. (particularly the 100% waste if Book is one of those initial 3)
Of note: Contrary to what is listed, Shaft Axe takes 40 seconds to research instead of 45. Quarry takes 50 seconds instead of the listed 55. (And yes, i have too much time on my hands)
Variables & Methodology
1. Book of thoth (10% gold gather rate increase) 30 second research time, 400 wood 30 favor.
2. Pick Axe (10% gold gather rate + 50% capacity) 30 second research time, 50 food 120 wood.
3. Shaft Axe (10% gold gather rate + 50% capacity) 40 second research time, 150 food 250 wood.
4. Quarry (10% gold gather rate + 50% capacity) 50 second research time, 200 food 300 wood.
Of note to testers:
DO NOT WINDOW OUT if you are testing in the scenario editor. Game starts doubling your gold output. This does not work in a regular game either, so dont even think about it.
Methodology:
1. Two large gold mines placed on map. One mining camp is placed diagonal to it.
2. On each side of the camp, a villager is placed. Total villagers for test: 4. (Reasoning: This setup allows the villagers to snuggle up close to the mine camp and immediately drop the gold off without having to walk one millimeter. This factors out travel and walking time, allowing for more accurate results. 4 villagers are chosen because fewer villagers lowers activation result skewing)
3. The villagers are left to mine for 5 minutes. At the end of this 5 minutes the villagers are stopped and emptied of all excess resources.
4. Each test is performed 3 times. The sheer lack of variation using this 4 villager method makes increased trials rather unpragmatic. When combinations of upgrades are the same, 1 test is performed to verify (which it did) that order of upgrades makes no difference.
Since i need to finish my overall Egyptian economic study to give exact cost recovery, I am not going to list the data here for it is a bit time consuming, especially since it would still only be a partial list. When it is done, it will list the results of each test, the gains over cumulative and base, villager gather/minute, confidence intervals, etc...
Loicenick
[This message has been edited by LoicenickAoM (edited 01-02-2003 @ 08:53 AM).]