[ThisisbasedonwhatIunderstandaboutstockpilessofar;pleasecorrectmeifI'mwrong.]



Stockpiles have been one of the most confusing topics for me in all my time in playing Endless Legend.



---



At first glance, stockpiles seem like a super bad deal.



The tooltip for the most advanced stockpile reads +875 food/industry/science. On Fast, it costs 1250 production to make a stockpile and this seems like it might be helpful.



However, it costs 5000 production to make the same stockpile on Endless. I don't know about you, but 5000 production for 875 of another resource always seemed like a really, really awful idea.



---



What isn't obvious right away is that stockpiles are treated the same way that a luxury boost is: they give you an effect over x number of turns, where x is based on your game speed.



Right now, on Fast and Normal, the booster lasts 1 turn; on Endless it lasts 2 turns. I haven't tested Slow, but I imagine that it's going to be 2 turns as well.



This means that on Fast/Normal, a stockpile gives you +875 resource and on Slow/Endless it actually gives you 1,750 resources.



If my math is right, that's a 70% industry-to-resource conversion rate on Fast, a 35% conversion rate on Normal/Endless and something in between those two numbers at slow speed.



---



Stockpiles also upgrade. This was something I randomly picked up that had never occurred to me. The free, horrible 25 resource stockpiles you get from certain techs will upgrade each time you research a new stockpile tech. This is actually kind of cool, but not at all obvious.



---



Edit: The actual math is that stockpiles (not buildable) start at 25 resources; the earlier stockpile tech adds +150 resource, for a total of 175 resources and the later stockpile tech adds an additional +700 resources, for a total of 875 resources. It looks like if you skipped the first stockpile tech, your stockpiles would only give you 725 resources.



Whenever you research the techs, all existing stockpiles get upgraded.



---



Edit #2: With the first stockpile tech, it looks like the numbers are 1200 production on normal and you get back 175 resources (which is again a super terrible deal, like a 15% conversion on Normal/Endless and ~30% conversion on Fast).



---



Edit #3: Necrophage food boosters are a separate booster, and they have a similar effect. They give +120 food per round; they last 1 round on Fast/Normal and 2 rounds on Slow/Endless.



---



Now everyone hates using stockpiles; that's a UI issue that no one can easily fix, I don't think.



---



Have any more thoughts on stockpiles? Did I miss anything or get anything wrong? Please let me know.

While making stockpiles is generally an awful waste of resources, USING them is actually extremely efficient. With just the more advanced Stockpile tech, a Stockpile gives 725 of Food or Industry. Now you're probably thinking "Er...that makes no sense, how would we use them if we don't make them?"



The market.



In a recent game where I was playing the Forgotten, I managed to snatch 6 Food and 6 Industry stockpiles for about 300 dust each from the market. Or, in other words, 8700 Food/Industry total for about 3600 Dust total. Now consider that buying out a unit or building typically costs 2-4 times the Industry price -- for example, with the Slaves, Prisoners, and Volunteers tech an Era VI Marine with full Dust gear costs 871 Industry (which is a buyout of 2218) on Normal speed (note that ideally you'd be buying out units from a city with a Necrophage or Roving Clans governor). So...spend 2.54 Dust per Industry with the buyout...or spend 0.41 Dust per Industry with a stockpile. For 6 Industry stockpiles, that's 4350 Industry for 1800 Dust rather than spending 11,049 Dust on buying out the unit. Or about a 9.5k savings in Dust.



I don't know about you, but if there was a tech that said "Receive 9.5k dust for researching me" in Era IV I'm *pretty* sure I'd get it each game.



And that's not counting the Food stockpiles (unless Broken Lords), Science stockpiles (unless Forgotten), or, y'know, more than 6 Industry Stockpiles potentially throughout the whole game.



Now, this becomes a lot less effective in multiplayer if people are "competing" to buy the stockpiles on the marketplace since it's not worth actually producing them in most cases...but it's made me take a second look at it for single player.

Thanks for the information!



I think they could be useful for wide builds (or tall military) if the game could be played as an Empire builder - which, to be fair, it can against the AI on regular difficulties. I still don´t believe there´s anything I would trade off in my usual tech/build paths to fit stockpiles. Maybe something very situational like playing Cult on terrain with no Dust and huge science, and with a human opponent flooding the units market.



Settings also change the game a lot, of course. If you disable the military victories, or customize the game with rules like "no war" or "teams", the game changes to the point the Roving Clans are easily among the strongest, and they can have very efficient wide builds with setsekes and the accumulation of trade route bonuses.



Makes me want to try huge landmasses with many RC governors using the trait for less expansion disapproval on several small collonies fed by a couple of stockpile producers.

Very interesting. Thank you lilyophelia.



Stockpiles should be clarified in game description, especially about the effect of the two techs of era 3 and era 4. It's really an hidden knowledge.+

I think the game needs more tooltips / pop-ups overall, in order to better explain what different modifiers are doing.