Question:
In regard to speed to build a barracks, a footman/grunt, and upgrades, do orcs or humans either produce faster units? I've heard that the human upgrades are faster, and I've heard that the human upgrades are slower. In a low resource game, is rushing with humans better because usually I can spare the gold before I can the wood. Also, do either footmen or grunts come out faster, or do they have the same build rate?
-Submitted by SwornX102

Answer:
This is easily checked by opening up the map editor. Once you have it open, click on the 'Player' tab found at the top, and than either 'Upgrade Properties' (for upgrades) or 'Unit Properties' (for units) . The numbers found in the row titled 'Built Time' (in Unit Properties) or 'Step Cost' (Upgrade Properties) represent the amount of time that it takes to upgrade. Note that these numbers do no represent seconds, but one-twelvth of the number of 'game cycles' it takes to complete the task. The higher the number is, the longer it takes to research.

Calculating Game Cycles
Here's how to translate these game cycles into real time. Take the number you find under Built Time or Step Cost and multiply it by 12. For example: the first human weapon upgrade has a Step Cost of 200. Multiply it by 12 and you get 2400 game cycles. Every 40 game cycles translates to about 1 second of real time (generally for speed setting 'faster'). 2400 divided by 40 works out to 60 seconds or one minute. So this first weapon upgrade will take approximately 1 minute to reasearch.

The units
The 'unit properties' shows us that a grunt and a footman both have a build time of 60. This means that their build time is exactly the same. If you don't believe the map editor, it is easily tested with Terrain.pud found under my weekly maps.

The barracks
Again, both the human and orc barracks are even with a build time of 200.

The upgrades
You can see the first weapon and shield upgrade, for both humans and orcs has a Step Time of 200. Seeing that the same calculation applies to the one I demonstrated originally, we know that it will take about 1 minute to upgrade. The second upgrades for both races have a Step Time of 250. It takes a little bit longer to upgrade these ones, but they still are the same for both races.

I'm willing to bet that the people who have told you that human upgrades are slower/faster base it on the fact that the human weapon upgrades are more gold intensive. Some players will find that easier to deal with, and some will find it harder. In a low resource game, you can compensate for whatever resource you will need by using different early build orders. By the time you actually get a Blacksmith started, you will have enough peons, to allow you to switch them back and forth from gold and wood according to the amount of resources needed. Human upgrades, being gold intensive in comparison, can be made up for by having an extra peon on gold, over an orc counterpart.

The only problem you will have on plains of snow, low resources, is the second human weapon upgrade. It costs you 900 more gold than the orcs second weapon upgrade, added to the 300 extra gold the first one cost you, and you miss out on a possible 2 extra grunts. It might not seem like much, but when you only have 40,000 gold to work with on low resources, every little bit helps.

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