Alexfrog (#32558),

Why does Buto appear twice, with different ratings?

Because I screwed up. Delete the first one in the third round, its very bad.

I copied the name list and then modified / reordered them each tie. And made a mistake there.

Alexfrog (#36097),

One of the Buto's is probably Sawu. You can figure out for yourself which one is which...

zaiga (#39847),

Yes. The higher ranked "Buto" is always the Sawu.

Why not just edit it? Excellent article, by the way!

I have summarized Alexfrog's valuations as best as I can on a player aid here:
http://innovan.freelinuxhost.com/amun.html

Very nice.

Is there a higher resolution version of this? All I could find was the gif.

Thanks

Unfortunately that's the largest picture of the Amun-Re board I've been able to find on the internet. If you can point me to larger scanned flat picture, I'll photoshop the rest again. There have been several requests to make a larger version.

On Franz Vohwinkel's web site there is a 1000x680 Amun-Re board, go here:
http://www.franz-vohwinkel.de/db/picture.phtml?PictureID=159...
and then click to get the larger image.

The -3 on Sawu in C phase is a bug I think.

Very interesting!


I wonder what I'd change if I was to reevaluate them again now.

Let me add my province evalution here for discussion. It's a very straight-forward method how I evaluate the provinces.

1) I estimate the expected total income each farmer will produce. From this I subtract the cost of buying the farmers. The first three farmers cost 1, 2 and 3 gold. And the farmers above that 2.5 gold each as you can get them as rewards.

2) Each card is worth 3 gold or a bit more. The first cards are more valuable than the last ones, since it's easier to make one card work effectively than ten cards.

3) Each temple is worth about 5 gold as they usually give 2 points and it costs about 3 gold to get 1 point with pyramids (1 set = 3 pyramids = 9 stones = about 20 gold = 6 points). Each extra stone is worth about 3 gold.

Let's estimate the value of Abu, for example. Let's assume that the water always stays at 2, as this is the most common case.

- The three farmers will give you a total of 3 farmers * 3 rounds * 2 gold/round = 18 gold. The farmers cost 6 gold, so you get a profit of 12 gold.

- You can buy 2 two cards. First of them is worth about 3.5 gold, the second a bit less. Since Abu allows you to buy 2 cards each round, I estimate the second card symbol to be worth 3.5 gold as well. Almost every province allows you to buy at least 1 power card, so I won't give much extra value for the first card in the future rounds. So the first card gives you a profit of 3.5-1=2.5 gold, and the second card is worth 3.5-2=1.5 each round. So the value of the card symbols is 2.5+3*1.5=7 gold.

- The additional income is 12 gold in the Old Age, so we get a total of 12+7+12=31 for the province value. This value should be compared with the values of other provinces to determine the correct price for the province.

Using this approach we will get the following province values:
Damanhur 21.5
Buto 22.5
Mendes 22.5
Avaris 31.5
Baharya 23.5
Memphis 26
Amarna 23
Dakhla 22.5
Abydos 23
Thebes 28.5
Sawu 33
Kharga 31
Edfu 23
Abu 31
Berenike 26.5

The camels are expected to always stay alive. The high card buying limit of Memphis and Abydos has increased the value of the provinces by 1 gold compared to those with the ability of buying only 2 cards.

In my opinion, the worst province in the 1st round is Damanhur. So we set the price of Damanhur to be 0. From this we will get the following prices for the provinces.

Sawu 11.5
Avaris 10
Kharga 9.5
Abu 9.5
Thebes 7
Berenike 5
Memphis 4.5
Baharya 2
Amarna 1.5
Abydos 1.5
Edfu 1.5
Buto 1
Mendes 1
Dakhla 1
Damanhur 0

Of course, there has to be made some adjustments to the prices depending on which provinces came up for the auction. If there are lots of farmers coming up early in the game, then the camels are less valuable. If, on the other hand, there are not too many farmer provinces, then the value of camel provinces is even higher.

If you can easily get the most pyramids to one of the provinces on sale, then that province is definitely worth 3 gold more.

There are some significant differences between my and Alexfrog's evaluation. In my opinion, the best provinces are the three camel provinces. They give a high income, but what's important to notice, that you can buy 1 or 2 farmers there (unlike in Berenike). These farmers are the most cost-effective farmers you can get. Anyway, the 6 best provinces are the same for me and Alexfrog.

With the next provinces we also seem to agree. I've valued Abydos a bit higher, since the free stone can be very valuable. And the ability of buying a lot of cards can be very useful, if you can get some money. If you're unlucky with your cards in Abydos, then you're in trouble though.

The last interesting difference is where I consider Dakhla to be better than Damanhur whereas Alexfrog thinks the opposite. The are two reasons for this. I consider 12 gold profit to be high for one province. Probably you won't get the same income with Damanhur. And there's a good chance to get the 8 production card with Dakhla, as you get the bonus card and you can buy two cards each round. It's also good to notice that Dakhla suits better to bonus power cards than Damanhur. Sure, Damanhur has two temples, but the higher income and the possibility to buy more cards and hit your bonus power cards makes Dakhla slightly better, in my opinion.

The following auctions are highly situational. In general, the camel provinces are the still the best, as they give high income with low cost. Farmer provinces are a lot less effective, as you lose 1/3 of the profit compared to the 1st round, but the cost of buying the farmers is the same.