Economy: Real Experts put Farms in their Peon Lines!

Bet you thought that gold mining was pretty much to be ignored in WarCraft III - I know I did. However, MiCrOsLaVe has proven that there is a way to increase the efficiency of Orc and Human gold collection - by putting a Farm in between your Town Hall and the Mine - I kid you not! Check out slave's work below for this astonishing find. I fully expect this little tactic to be common play by all experts very shortly - its a biggie as it translates to a significant gain!!

In the midst of some detailed economy testing I am doing for some articles here, I discovered something very interesting - and I will walk you through it here.

This is the standard path that peasants take when mining gold in War3. In this pattern, players can opt for either 4 or 5 peons to collect gold - but you need 5 in order to match the gold collection rate of the Undead or Night Elves. Note how peasants enter the mine from the line on the south and return on the line to the north. However, neither line is technically the shortest path to the mine. So, here is the trick - add a structure which disrupts the default walking path, enforcing a more efficient gold collection pattern as such:

The obstructed path achieves real results - you can have only 4 peasants actually achieve the gold collection rate of 5 in the standard path. Anytime I can get a 20% bonus for free, I know I would take it!

But, it gets even better. As a result of minimizing the travelling distance (by forcing your workers to travel in a single straight path) you can reduce the total amount of workers required per gold mine, while maintaining the same rate of gold harvesting. I was able to maintain the same harvesting rate, while reducing my worker count to four, on all diagonally setup gold mines. This is a large improvement from the default setup - and cannot be ignored! Here are the optimal placements:

Humans

Orcs

On all four setups, for both Humans & Orcs, I was able to get the worker count down to four, while maintaining the same gold rate as an Elf or Undead player would enjoy. As far as I know, and I tested it for quite some time, there is no way to use buildings to decrease the travelling distance when the gold mines were 0,90,180,270 degrees from the town hall. I needed six workers for those. The difference between 5 or 6 peons, when the gold mine is a multiple of 90 degrees from the hall, may not seem like much, but over a 10 minute test, I got a 800 difference between using 6 workers vs 5. Luckily, most Blizzard maps have the gold mine on a 45 degree angle from the town hall, allowing Human and Orc players (who would normally be on par, worker count wise with Night Elves or Undead players) to require one less worker. Saving you 90 gold, and a food spot. For something your going to build anyway, placing farms, and especially burrows (which are very effective at protecting peons in those positions), placing them smartly can save you 90 gold, and allow for an extra spot in your army. Incase you are wondering, I had to use an Altar in the Orc's South-East mine to get the same efficiency because a burrow could not be built where it needed to be.

For more exemple with images click here.

So, practice the placements - this hard work pays off!

MiCrOsLaVe

Added: August 7th 2002
Reviewer: MiCrOsLaVe
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