Virtue Analysis

[Hobbes74]

Excellent work. Now I've found a way to waste time while waiting for the game to come out
First, a couple of observations about the tree/planner:

• The Industry 3 Sinergy bonus is the same as Investment (Industry Tier 2), or earning 1% of the stockpiled energy per turn, up to a maximum of 100. Is this correct?
  
• Social Mores and Laboratory Apprenticeship (Knowledge Tier 1) also share the same bonus.
  
• The total culture numbers seem either to be a little off or I'm not getting the logic. It takes 24 culture points for the 1st virtue, but after you get it it shows a total of 20 culture.This repeats itself afterwards but I can't figure out why.
  
• Does the planner takes into account the Synergy bonus that give free virtues? It doesn't seem to be the case, but then I'm not understanding really how the culture values work.

I'm also looking into possible virtue strategies to maximize the gains using your planner, I'll post here my conclusions.

[Aeson]

Only ~5 more days!

- Yes, Investment and Industry Tier 3 are the same effect. They are additive I think, in which case you can get up to a total of 200 E/turn between them.

- Social Mores affects Culture, while Laboratory Apprenticeship affects Science. The rate is the same for both.

- The Culture numbers should scale up, 20 + 2n^2 is the formula used. It looks correct to me. It sounds like the javascript isn't working correctly on your machine. What browser/os are you on?

- No free Virtues are taken into account. Neither are any of the other Culture effects in Virtues. I'm not sure if a free Virtue ups the cost of other Virtues or not. There are free Virtues available via other means and so the timing is not possible to predict. This will just give you a rough idea of how the cost will scale up and the Culture value (not necessarily the Culture spent) the Virtues selected represent.

It should be noted that there are other factors that will affect Culture costs. The number of cities is definitely one of them (see Memeweb's effect), and surely game speed must factor in ... and so what the planner says is not going to be what you will see in game.

[Hobbes74]

- The Culture numbers should scale up, 20 + 2n^2 is the formula used. It looks correct to me. It sounds like the javascript isn't working correctly on your machine. What browser/os are you on?

Windows 7 with Chrome. It isn't a big thing but it just looks weird

- No free Virtues are taken into account. Neither are any of the other Culture effects in Virtues. I'm not sure if a free Virtue ups the cost of other Virtues or not. There are free Virtues available via other means and so the timing is not possible to predict. This will just give you a rough idea of how the cost will scale up and the Culture value (not necessarily the Culture spent) the Virtues selected represent.

It should be noted that there are other factors that will affect Culture costs. The number of cities is definitely one of them (see Memeweb's effect), and surely game speed must factor in ... and so what the planner says is not going to be what you will see in game.

Yeah, those numbers should be for 1 city on Standard game speed. It would be nice though to have a table listing things like 1 City + Earth Relic = x turns for next virtue level, 2 cities + 1 Earth Relic, etc.

What I'm looking right now are virtue paths to maximize the number of synergies with a number of limited virtue choices (15-20). For instance:
* The quickest way to get the Tier 3 synergy bonus (+10% on everything) requires 19 virtues (all focused on Prosperity and Industry) and it's focused on Prosperity and Industry. It also gives the Prosperity 1 and Industry 1 and 2 synergies, for a total of 20% Growth, Energy and Production on every city, 10% Science and Culture on every city.
* If you want the Tier 2 A synergy (free afinity level) you need a minimum of 20 virtues on Might, Industry and Prosperity.

These virtue paths are theoretical and would fit better some factions than others.

[Aeson]

Ah, I see what you're talking about with the Culture now. It should be fixed now.

Going for Synergy bonuses with the fewest possible Virtues is interesting. Working in the best Virtues is important too.



I'm afraid we'll see a lot of 3 into Prosperity (Colony Initiative for free Settler) and 5 into Industry (Independence Network for internal Trade Routes) as it seems to be the optimal path for just about any playstyle but the earliest military rushes. After that it gets a lot more interesting though. Could go into Might, further into Prosperity or Industry, or even start in on Knowledge at that point. Largely situational which is the "right" move from there on out.

If they tone down Trade Routes the first few Virtues become a lot more interesting. But for now, I can't see how anything else can compete with getting the first internal Trade Routes going ASAP.