Everything has a price - Ozzy's first CivWorld lesson

OzzyKP · May 23, 2011, 00:03

So I spent some time playing around with the game this weekend and while by no means yet an expect I have some tips & tricks I can share.

Everything has a price
What I've found the most important part of the game to be is the marketplace. There is a real, dynamic market for goods and commodities and this is extremely powerful and useful for the astute player. There are five basic resources in the game: food, production, science, culture & gold. All can be produced in your city and the first four can all be purchased or sold in the market.

CivWorld is a micromanager's dream come true. The production in your cities can be maximized based on numerous factors (I won't go into them here) but a common question is what to focus on? Food/production? Culture? Everything? My answer is pretty simple: focus on the resource that fetches the best price in the market.

Food is especially a good one to focus on since the price is generally fairly high and fluctuates often. When I first started out my one and only goal was to grow my city. Just like in any civ game, population equals increased production. But I neglected the power of the market. Early on I noticed that 100 food was selling in the market for about 1,000 gold. I had some food, but I didn't sell since I was waiting to pop another population point.

A few hours later the price of good had fallen and was trading for around 300 gold per 100. If I had sold my food when the price was high and bought more when the price fell I could have tripled my food supply with minimal time and effort. Wow!

That is an unusual amount of volatility for that resource, but even for more stable resources, you are wise to pay attention to the invisible hand. Lets say you have 5 population and lets say you can get 10 food/science/culture/production/gold out of each population point. Ok, good, which do you go for? Well if food is trading for 400 gold (per 100 units, always) and culture is trading at 100 gold (prices generally near the equilibrium in my game) then you'd be a fool to build culture. The 50 food you can produce could be traded in for 200 culture, whereas 50 culture you can produce can be traded in for just 12.5 food. If you wanted culture, then build food and sell it.

Nothing is sacrosanct. Everything has a price. If you are working on building an army and focusing on production but production prices start soaring, sell sell sell!

OzzyKP · May 23, 2011, 08:56

Now that strategy assumes you can produce as much food as you can science, culture, etc. Sometimes it isn't like that. Each era has different built in bonuses. In the Renaissance for example there is a +50% bonus to science. There are also wonders and civics and other benefits that help. So that definitely needs to factor into your decision making about what to prioritize as well.

LzPrst · May 27, 2011, 03:54

"For it is money that turns the world, and wealth that rules it"
-Advisor Civ2

LzPrst · May 28, 2011, 04:14

The Dark Ages have a -50% science nerf.

A few tips from someone who wasted a lot of resources experimenting by moving stuff around.

Houses are free to move around so play around with them, some citizens like having neighbours, so putting for example farmers houses next to each other boosts their productivity.

Production has in my game had a near constant high price (500-600), which means you should probably have some production. Though as mentioned above, it seems that clustering workers of a certain type improves productivity, so until you have at least 4-5 pops, you should probably focus on growing your numbers through food (unless food is very cheap on the market). For production in the early game you should place your worker-houses next to wooded areas and throw up a lumbermill. Then road all the forest squares and you will easily reach 10-12 production per house. Then upgrade your lumbermill and you should easily reach 15 hammers per worker. Then sell at market or build an army. (still haven't figured out how to use an army).

Jon Miller · May 28, 2011, 10:13

I thought science would always be little... but then I discovered that it goes up a lot a day later.

Be careful when you move yoru guard towers.

JM

Donegeal · May 28, 2011, 18:20

I think Ozzy has it right. The Market is the absolute key... almost. The Market is the key IF you have four dedicated players (one for each resourse: Food, Production, Science and Culture). With a little communication and each of the four people specializing in each commodity, you can corner the markets.

It also seems that it is helpful to know the 'standards' for each commodity. Just looking at the graph doesn't really reflect once going on. I have been trying to maintain food at a buy price of 513. Production I keep around 600. Science I haven't much watched, so I'm not sure, but Culture (which seems to be the easies thing to get) at around 100.

Donegeal · May 29, 2011, 10:17

Trying a new stragety. I am specializing my city to Science. I have 9 population and here is how much each one is producing:
31, 31, 35, 29, 35, 35, 31, 31, 31.

I am going to play around with that one that is only getting 29 to see if I can improve it.

Jonny · May 29, 2011, 11:31

I've been thinking about going fully specialized... right now I'm split food/production/science, since those are the most expensive things. Gold can be made selling selling whatever (food/production) I don't need, and culture seems easy enough to come by from the puzzle game and by buying it for cheap.