How long do your caravans last on e1.2.0 and e1.1.0?

How long do your caravans last after starting them?


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The main purpose of this thread is the poll. While we all hear how caravans are being killed too quickly as of this patch I'd be interested to see how many people are making it to be profitable and if they aren't, how much money they're effectively losing per caravan.

Edit: I'd just like to bring awareness to mexxico requesting that those who have caravans destroyed in less than 1 week send their savefiles to him via PM. Please do take the time to do this, more data for the devs is flat out better for everyone.
 
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I thought the chance was going to be very low? Looks as if that's not the case right now.
Supposedly the chance was 5% each day now while it was also supposedly 1% before the patch. That should mean only 30% of caravans should be captured by the end of week 1... the poll speaks for itself.
 
I thought I'd throw this into the thread since I want this to be a little bit more statistically minded than other discussions and I like doing a bit of math for these things.

So the base price to buy a caravan is now 18,000 denars and they take about a week to start making money normally with wages of about 100 for a party size of 30. Income from them I think can safely average out at about 500 considering the time scale I'll be using and how they take a long time to start making the more significant amounts like 1000.

Initial investment: -18,000
Upkeep per day: -100
Income per day: 500

This means that you don't make your money back until about day 54, or late into week 7. Even if the devs' estimate percentage chance of 5% at a caravan being destroyed per day were correct (and thus this were actually going according to their plan), that would mean there is a 93.73% chance that you will lose money on your investment and a 30.17% chance of losing it by day 7.

The current numbers on the poll suggest a slightly higher rate of closer to a 40-50% chance of losing your caravan by day 7, so I'll lowball it a bit and say it's a 7% chance per day and thus 40% chance of losing it per week. That means:

- 40% chance to never get any income from your caravan.
- 64% chance to get back less than 20% of your initial investment.
- 78% chance to get back less than 40% of your initial investment.
- 87% chance to get back less than 60% of your initial investment.
- 92% chance to get back less than 80% of your initial investment.
- 95% chance to get back less than 100% of your initial investment.
- 97% chance to not get back your initial investment and pay back 83% of the caravan's wages.
- 98% chance to never be profitable.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think I'll ever be taking a 2% chance of making a few hundred denars off of a singular caravan, especially not when I have a 40% chance to just straight up lose as much as 18,700 denars. Mathematically, you're vastly more likely to make more money betting on who will lose a game of Russian roulette than you are using caravans as of this patch. Even if the devs' numbers were accurate, they clearly either hate caravans or didn't run the math at all considering that's still a 94% chance of never seeing a single denar of profit.

I rest my case.
 
I thought I'd throw this into the thread since I want this to be a little bit more statistically minded than other discussions and I like doing a bit of math for these things.

So the base price to buy a caravan is now 18,000 denars and they take about a week to start making money normally with wages of about 100 for a party size of 30. Income from them I think can safely average out at about 500 considering the time scale I'll be using and how they take a long time to start making the more significant amounts like 1000.

Initial investment: -18,000
Upkeep per day: -100
Income per day: 500

This means that you don't make your money back until about day 54, or late into week 7. Even if the devs' estimate percentage chance of 5% at a caravan being destroyed per day were correct (and thus this were actually going according to their plan), that would mean there is a 93.73% chance that you will lose money on your investment and a 30.17% chance of losing it by day 7.

The current numbers on the poll suggest a slightly higher rate of closer to a 40-50% chance of losing your caravan by day 7, so I'll lowball it a bit and say it's a 7% chance per day and thus 40% chance of losing it per week. That means:

- 40% chance to never get any income from your caravan.
- 64% chance to get back less than 20% of your initial investment.
- 78% chance to get back less than 40% of your initial investment.
- 87% chance to get back less than 60% of your initial investment.
- 92% chance to get back less than 80% of your initial investment.
- 95% chance to get back less than 100% of your initial investment.
- 97% chance to not get back your initial investment and pay back 83% of the caravan's wages.
- 98% chance to never be profitable.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think I'll ever be taking a 2% chance of making a few hundred denars off of a singular caravan, especially not when I have a 40% chance to just straight up lose as much as 18,700 denars. Mathematically, you're vastly more likely to make more money betting on who will lose a game of Russian roulette than you are using caravans as of this patch. Even if the devs' numbers were accurate, they clearly either hate caravans or didn't run the math at all considering that's still a 94% chance of never seeing a single denar of profit.

I rest my case.
Sounds bleak
 
I thought I'd throw this into the thread since I want this to be a little bit more statistically minded than other discussions and I like doing a bit of math for these things.

So the base price to buy a caravan is now 18,000 denars and they take about a week to start making money normally with wages of about 100 for a party size of 30. Income from them I think can safely average out at about 500 considering the time scale I'll be using and how they take a long time to start making the more significant amounts like 1000.

Initial investment: -18,000
Upkeep per day: -100
Income per day: 500

This means that you don't make your money back until about day 54, or late into week 7. Even if the devs' estimate percentage chance of 5% at a caravan being destroyed per day were correct (and thus this were actually going according to their plan), that would mean there is a 93.73% chance that you will lose money on your investment and a 30.17% chance of losing it by day 7.

The current numbers on the poll suggest a slightly higher rate of closer to a 40-50% chance of losing your caravan by day 7, so I'll lowball it a bit and say it's a 7% chance per day and thus 40% chance of losing it per week. That means:

- 40% chance to never get any income from your caravan.
- 64% chance to get back less than 20% of your initial investment.
- 78% chance to get back less than 40% of your initial investment.
- 87% chance to get back less than 60% of your initial investment.
- 92% chance to get back less than 80% of your initial investment.
- 95% chance to get back less than 100% of your initial investment.
- 97% chance to not get back your initial investment and pay back 83% of the caravan's wages.
- 98% chance to never be profitable.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think I'll ever be taking a 2% chance of making a few hundred denars off of a singular caravan, especially not when I have a 40% chance to just straight up lose as much as 18,700 denars. Mathematically, you're vastly more likely to make more money betting on who will lose a game of Russian roulette than you are using caravans as of this patch. Even if the devs' numbers were accurate, they clearly either hate caravans or didn't run the math at all considering that's still a 94% chance of never seeing a single denar of profit.

I rest my case.
LMAO, the best way to show the power of mathematics :smile:
 
I thought I'd throw this into the thread since I want this to be a little bit more statistically minded than other discussions and I like doing a bit of math for these things.

So the base price to buy a caravan is now 18,000 denars and they take about a week to start making money normally with wages of about 100 for a party size of 30. Income from them I think can safely average out at about 500 considering the time scale I'll be using and how they take a long time to start making the more significant amounts like 1000.

Initial investment: -18,000
Upkeep per day: -100
Income per day: 500

This means that you don't make your money back until about day 54, or late into week 7. Even if the devs' estimate percentage chance of 5% at a caravan being destroyed per day were correct (and thus this were actually going according to their plan), that would mean there is a 93.73% chance that you will lose money on your investment and a 30.17% chance of losing it by day 7.

The current numbers on the poll suggest a slightly higher rate of closer to a 40-50% chance of losing your caravan by day 7, so I'll lowball it a bit and say it's a 7% chance per day and thus 40% chance of losing it per week. That means:

- 40% chance to never get any income from your caravan.
- 64% chance to get back less than 20% of your initial investment.
- 78% chance to get back less than 40% of your initial investment.
- 87% chance to get back less than 60% of your initial investment.
- 92% chance to get back less than 80% of your initial investment.
- 95% chance to get back less than 100% of your initial investment.
- 97% chance to not get back your initial investment and pay back 83% of the caravan's wages.
- 98% chance to never be profitable.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think I'll ever be taking a 2% chance of making a few hundred denars off of a singular caravan, especially not when I have a 40% chance to just straight up lose as much as 18,700 denars. Mathematically, you're vastly more likely to make more money betting on who will lose a game of Russian roulette than you are using caravans as of this patch. Even if the devs' numbers were accurate, they clearly either hate caravans or didn't run the math at all considering that's still a 94% chance of never seeing a single denar of profit.

I rest my case.
source of 5% probability of losing your caravan each day? because that would be insane...

also I think caravans should be a high risk high reward type of deal, let me explain:

initial cost: 25000 denars
upkeep: -100 denars/day
total cost: 25700 denars (including the 7 days of 0 profit)

curve up until day 50:
0.7% chance of losing your caravan each day
1100 denars of excess gold each day

so you'd have:
  • 0.7% chance of losing it on day one
  • 9% chance of losing it after getting back 50% of your investment
  • 13% chance of losing it after getting back 75% of your investment
  • 21% chance of losing it after getting back 100% of your investment

  • 77% chance of making 1000 denars profit
  • 72% chance of making 2000 denars profit
  • 70% chance of making 2400 denars profit at day 50

After day 50 the curve changes, your caravan is starting to get richer and gets noticed more often as time goes by, at the same time your traders get better at what they do and the caravan makes a bit more money as times goes by aswell.

so you'd have:
  • 56% chance of making 4000 denars of profit
  • 40% chance of making 6000 denars of profit
  • 27% chance of making 8000 denars of profit
  • 20% chance of making 10000 denars of profit at day 93
  • 3% chance of making 20000 denars of profit after 133 day
additional measures could be implemented:
  • change trade routes your caravan ideally changes the path to reach determinate places, resetting the curve to a situation previous to day 50 regarding the chance of losing it ( maybe day 25 or something like that)
  • additional security at a certain cost you can add more security, doing so reduces the chance of losing the caravan by a certain amount
  • escorting your caravan yourself leaves it up to you to defend your caravan, very profitable but requires full attention of the player and doesn't make it immune to getting captured (hoping for some bandit warlord to be implemented maybe)
and there could be things like:
  • loyalty the members of your caravan will start stealing from you making it less profitable or they will completely defect (not sure about this one as it would influence the chance of making/losing denars)
  • security depending on how many bandits infest the land the caravan travels in, it will be more or less profitable for the player
if you want to see the curve i used to calculate the %: https://ibb.co/xqVXHQj
 
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source of 5% probability of losing your caravan each day? because that would be insane...

also I think caravans should be a high risk high reward type of deal, let me explain:

maths
Thanks for the additional data!

I'm mainly basing it off of this quote from mexxico in his poll thread: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...come-source-or-not.414500/page-2#post-9360527

He notes a target range of 2-5% that could be excessive (which does happily suggest that they'll change this soon). Due to the poll's early results I elected to pop my math up to 6% as that seems more in keeping with the at the time current tally while keeping in mind the devs' target.
 
Thanks for the additional data!

I'm mainly basing it off of this quote from mexxico in his poll thread: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...come-source-or-not.414500/page-2#post-9360527

He notes a target range of 2-5% that could be excessive (which does happily suggest that they'll change this soon). Due to the poll's early results I elected to pop my math up to 6% as that seems more in keeping with the at the time current tally while keeping in mind the devs' target.
yep, its probably way more than 5% i think, lost almost all my caravans yesterday's night after updating to 1.2.0
 
yep, its probably way more than 5% i think, lost almost all my caravans yesterday's night after updating to 1.2.0
Likely, I figure a rate of 98% of all caravans being net losses is a dramatic enough statement though, while keeping in mind that may be lower than the real value.
 
Likely, I figure a rate of 98% of all caravans being net losses is a dramatic enough statement though, while keeping in mind that may be lower than the real value.
should also factor in the cost of hiring and gearing up your companion of choice for the caravan, probably making the chance of losing a lot of money very very close to 100%
 
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As i have said in other post, TW doesn't seems to do the math to have a estimation before implementing anything. Not even a rough one.
 
As i have said in other post, TW doesn't seems to do the math to have a estimate before implementing anything.
I'm guessing they don't have hard coded things in the game, like prices and chances of something happening, rather they tried to create a self sustaining environment that works kinda like the real world does, where chance is determined by multiple factors and not just by an hard coded number
 
I'm guessing they don't have hard coded things in the game, like prices and chances of something happening, rather they tried to create a self sustaining environment that works kinda like the real world does, where chance is determined by multiple factors and not just by an hard coded number
I'd have to agree. They seem fairly fixated on the idea of a "real-world" economy that dynamically changes according to events in the world and player actions. The problem is that that kind of economy is almost impossible to simulate. There's a reason that even real economists stress that their models only roughly match the actual world, it'd be incredibly difficult for a 50-100 man dev team to do, or at least not without bringing out the economics textbooks (which I seriously doubt they've done).
 
I think that having caravans with tons of men as big as regular armies was something wrong and I am glad to see that It has been changed. On the other hand, It brings undesirable consecuences which should be addressed. Maybe 15k for a Caravan is too much now and the cost should be lowered, or maybe It is something related to looters being OP in simulated battles, etc. Plus not sure if this is the reason because towns are now running out of money.

I hope we get a hotfix for this soon.
 
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