Land, Grain and Totems

I've spent a lot of hours in the last few days 'doing' land. Apparently now I know stuff other people might not, as I find myself answering a lot of questions in the discord.

So I decided to do a post for you all talking about these minor, nerdy issues that many people might wonder about.

Let's start with grain. We have a cool group in Pandon Reach, Region 41 (and yes we are still swapping players in, if you want to play land with us, let me know, you can buy a plot from me or swap me your plot for one of mine) - and we did some math. Shout out to @tambiologist

Grain and SPS production are related, and so price must be related as well. This is really interesting, and finally we have some numbers to calculate fair price for grains. As SPS price goes up, the neutral price for grain will go up as well.

Of course there are a lot of people sitting with millions of grain in their inventory right now, but that should filter into the environment over the next while and then its all about the production. You might remember I did some predictions about grain farming before we launched.

Not everybody knows this, and if you don't have grain in your region, you will auto-buy it from the game at 1 DEC each. That's a big ouch.

https://twitter.com/bulldog1205/status/1730666791804805455

So based on the calculation above, I did a small p2p grain deal for 0.07 dec per grain. Some people are offering cheaper, but generally they want to do deals in the millions of grain.

We don't know how long their inventories will last, but this gives us a good baseline of understanding. Remember if SPS price rises, the neutral price of grain rises too, so keep an eye on that.

Totem Fragments

Boy are people talking about totem chances. Its the nature of discord chats that only a few people read the messages while they are live, but I did some 'live math' in their about totem chances, and of course I get a smirk to see many people continuing to ask the same questions, and even come to different conclusions than the math clearly shows.

Should we claim more, or less, to improve chances?

Its an interesting question, but the math is clear - even if a bit nerdy.

So the probability of getting a totem fragment accumulates over time, and castles and keeps get bonuses to these numbers. Every time you claim/harvest any plot, you have a chance to find a totem fragment. Full totems are expensive, so this additional and exciting ROI on land is of great interest to many.

Let me do some simplified math to show you that it pretty much 'doesn't matter' how often you claim.

Situation A - You claim twice in two days at a 1% chance each.
Situation B - You claim once after two days at a 2% chance.

In Situation A, you have a 98.01% chance of zero totems, a 0.01% chance of 2 totems, and a 1.98% chance of 1 totem.

In Situation B, you have a 98% chance of zero, and a 2% chance of 1.

Notice the difference? This is how all the math will go, the Expected Value (EV) is the EXACT same, but the guy who claims twice has a miniscule percent chance of getting more totems. (also a slightly higher overall percentage of getting zero totems).

But the expected values are the same - you can extend this logic to whatever probabilities over how ever many claims, once per day over a week vs once per week will yield a tiny chance of getting 7 or 5 or 3 totem fragments, but over all the same Expected Value.

The only caveat here is for Castles and Keeps, which have a grain COST for claiming, so EV actually goes down the more you claim.

Are you feeling lucky? If so, claim slightly more.

If not feeling particularily lucky, just claim when you can, and don't worry about it.

Freedom and Friendship