Economy calculator

Tell it what you are producing and it tells you how many villagers each resource needs so the queue never stalls. Every cost, training time and gather rate comes from Definitive Edition game data.

Start from a standard setup

What you are producing

buildings training non-stop
Villager
50F · 25s · 120F /min
2
Knight / Cavalier / Paladin
60F 75G · 30s · 120F 150G /min
2
Add production

Your economy

Villagers needed

To keep every queue running without ever going idle.

Food
22
480 / 22.8
Wood
3
80 / 33.7
Gold
12
300 / 26.2
Total on economy37
2× Villager240F /min
2× Knight / Cavalier / Paladin240F 300G /min
Reseeding 22 farms80 wood/min

Each farm holds 375 food and runs dry every 987s, then costs 60 wood to reseed. That reseeding wood is already counted above — it is the cost most players forget.

Research next

Break-even is the technology's total cost divided by the extra income it gives your current villagers.

Gold Shaft Mining5.3 min
175F 75W · +47/min across 12 villagers
Two-Man Saw49.5 min
300F 200W · +10/min across 3 villagers

Frequently asked

How many villagers do I need to keep one Town Center making villagers?

A villager costs 50 food and takes 25 seconds, so one Town Center drains 120 food per minute. On farms with Wheelbarrow (22.8 food/min per farmer) that is 6 farmers, which is where the classic 'six farms per Town Center' rule comes from.

How much gold does one Stable of Knights need?

A Knight costs 60 food and 75 gold every 30 seconds, so a single Stable drains 120 food and 150 gold per minute. With no mining upgrades a gold miner brings 22.8 gold per minute, so you need 7 miners per Stable. Scout Cavalry, by contrast, costs 80 food and no gold at all — 160 food per minute and zero miners.

Do farm upgrades make farmers gather faster?

No. Horse Collar, Heavy Plow and Crop Rotation only increase how much food a farm holds before it runs out (175, 250, 375 and 550). The gain is wood: reseeding costs 60 wood every time, so a farm with Crop Rotation costs 109 wood per 1,000 food gathered instead of 343 with no upgrades.

Where do these numbers come from?

Unit costs and training times, and technology costs and effects, are the Definitive Edition game values. Gather rates are the villager work rates from the game data. Farm rates are measured DE rates that include walking to the drop-off point, because a farmer's raw work rate does not reflect what they actually deliver.

Counter calculatorBuild ordersAsk the AI agent