Some strategy advice needed

[DrHook]

Originally posted by I_pity_the_fool
WRT your save:

Do you have anything against those religious civics? If you choose Free Religion you'll get +10% science and a happy face per religion in each city. And you won't get diplomacy modifiers for being of the wrong faith. Also, Organized Religion is good for infrastructure.

Also, there's no reason not to have Free Market or Mercantilism over Decentralization. It'll bring in a lot more money.

Yeah, I forget to check in on that screen frequently

Thanks for the tips Dominae- I played a full game last night and through the day and did much better by tech trading and focusing on getting the commerce jamming, and won a space race victory with a healthy point lead at the time of game end. I won't say Ii've got the bugger sussed as yet, but it was sort of a breakthrough


Robinski: I noticed a few things this last game when I started focusing on tech trading: 1 ) I needed to have at laest a cautious or better relationship. 2) if you hover over the tech in the trade screen, it will tell you the beaker cost. The tech you are offering should be close to that or the AI probably won't accept it. Sometimes you have to add 2 or 3 cheap ones to get an expensive one. Also, I read somewhere that they won't trade a tech when they are using that tech to build a wonder.

[Cort Haus]

I looked at the save game, which was suffering from low-pop, low growth and low GNP. Production was OK was Culture very high. Others have talked about trading and Civics - I'll stroll through the cities ...

Mecca - was unhappy, and needed a colosseum over a factory.

Basra was building a courthouse, which would only save 1g. A library would have gained you ~9 beakers.

Kufah - was building a bank, which was no use to it - needs observatory.

Narjan - building Wealth with an engineer. It needed aqua and granary to grow.

Baghdad - needs colosseum

Damascus - heaps of production but doing wealth - could have used more towns.

Generally - I noticed a lack of granaries, suggesting slow growth through the game. They would also have boosted your health. You seemed to be making wealth so you could keep the slider on 100% science - but perhaps more cottages --> towns everywhere instead.

[Cort Haus]

nb - maybe the bank was for the National Wonder, but I think a science improvement first would be better.

[baboon]

Originally posted by Jaybe

If running 100% science, markets etc. have nothing to work with. If running ZERO% science, libraries have nothing to work with.

Really? I was under the impression that when I ran 100% science the bank helped me not getting bankrupt. Could be really wrong there.

[Hayden]

Originally posted by baboon


Really? I was under the impression that when I ran 100% science the bank helped me not getting bankrupt. Could be really wrong there.

If you guys still arent sure, go into any city and mouse over the relavent stats in the top left of the city screen and they show you the equations used. Under Science it will say something like

Base commerce = 20
Science output = 20 * 90% = 18
Total Science = 18 * 150% from modifiers.

or something similar. Its quite straight forward really, your science is strictly calculated on your base commerce, which is in turn strictly calculated based on which tiles you are working and how much commerce they all have, so yeah, markets are a waste of time until much later in the game.

One strategy that I try and use these days, is I calculate the expected benefit from ever building I can build, before I build it. So if my advisor says build a courthouse, but my maintenance is only 2 gold, I wont waste my hammers, instead I will build another military unit to reinforce my armies. Sometime I need to remind myself that I dont 'need' every building in the city and that those hammers could be much better served building a military which in turn will discourage other civs from attacking me.

Haydens golden rule: "The best way to avoid a war is to always be prepared for one"

[dschur]

OK...I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest something unthinkable.

In my last game, I intentionally selected 80% Science, even when I could have broken even at 100%. I already had a decent tech lead, and I was only playing Noble, so I can't say this is something that would work every time, also my civ was Chinese, so the Financial trait plays into this too.

What I gained:
- around 100g per turn, allowing me to regularly upgrade all of my existing promoted military units, saving production, and keeping my military power high.
- efficiency - That Market and Grocer are only doing part of their job when you only use them for Health and Happiness, unless you produce some gold, 25% of 0% is 0g.
- Growth - the financial infrastructure I build allowed me to develop most of the "New World" unmolested, and with positive cash flow. As those cities grew, my overall beaker output skyrocketed over my old world core, even when it was 100% science.

Loss:
- I think it took me an extra turn initially on my research, until growth of the new cities kicked in.


Anyone else trying to see if there is an optimal science level ... or is the accepted wisdom always 100% except where unavoidable.

[Velociryx]

I would say that 100% science is only "optimal" in the early game, and the reason for that is that you've got no economic "boosters" to provide any real benefit or incentive to doing anything *but* research.

As the game progresses, however, a balance must be struck. By themselves, techs do not "do" anything for you, so in order to gain full advantage *from* a technology (whether you're in the lead, or not), you must DO something with it (build the forge, or some other building, race toward a new great wonder, build a new type of soldier, upgrade what you already have, *something,*) so I would agree 100% with the poster above.

Keeping research pegged at 100% is fine, so long as you have nothing to DO with all the commerce you're converting to research beakers, but the more techs you get under your belt, the more options you have, and the more demands for cold, hard, cash. Further, as has been pointed out, re-investing the cash into MORE infrastructure can easily reap benefits far in excess of their cost.

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Oh, clearly you are going to need *some* tax revenue for stuff like unit upgrades and judicious rush-buying of city builds (if you're running Univ Suffrage, that is).

The thing is that I'm typically running Representation, so I cannot buy stuff. That leaves upgrades. I'll often shoot for a mild surplus and slowly use the accumulated money to upgrade units. That, coupled with any gold I may get from failed wonder builds, should be enough to keep me relatively current.

-Arrian

[Hayden]

Originally posted by dschur
What I gained:
- around 100g per turn, allowing me to regularly upgrade all of my existing promoted military units, saving production, and keeping my military power high.
- efficiency - That Market and Grocer are only doing part of their job when you only use them for Health and Happiness, unless you produce some gold, 25% of 0% is 0g.
- Growth - the financial infrastructure I build allowed me to develop most of the "New World" unmolested, and with positive cash flow. As those cities grew, my overall beaker output skyrocketed over my old world core, even when it was 100% science.

Just critiquing that a little. You say you gained efficiency by moving to 90% because your markets and grocers actually started doing something. But I dont think thats neccesarily true. Because the bottom line, is that overall, the money you gained must have come directly from the beakers you lost. So while your markets started doing 'more', your libraries starting doing less, and the more efficient your markets started became, was exactly negated by the lost effiency from your libraries if you like. So I guess you need to include a con about how your libraries were less efficient.

I think your spot on with the unit upgrades though, I think putting 10% money on makes alot of sense if you have a large military. Being able to upgrade easily as opposed to building new units altogether saves you hammers which can in turn be used to build more universities.

Your last point I dont get. Are you saying that because you had more money, you didnt need to worry about skyrocketing maintenance slowing your civilization down? I dont understand how having more money in the bank affects anything other then your ability to upgrade units, trade with people and hurry production.

[dschur]

My point on maintenance refers to infrastructure. If you never run with a portion of your commerce diverted to gold production, you are less likely to see the value to pure economic upgrades like the bank, and you won't necessarily build Markets and Grocers before you need the Happiness/Health benefits. When you operate with a more balanced economy, you are going to have these things built. THEN....when you have to eat some serious maintenance costs from a slew of new cities (I was specifically referring to New World cities on a Terra map, but I think it applies to any mid-game expansion) you are in a much better position to do so.

For me, that 100g per turn surplus dropped pretty quickly down to 20 or so when I captured a quick string of barbarian cities, and also founded a couple of my own. This let me stay at 80% even during the expansion. Without the financial infrastructure to support it, I might have had to go even lower than 80%, or even operate in the red. And, If I had to operate in the red for a time, a decent bank balance does allow for funding of deficit spending.

You are quite correct that the commerce distribution is a zero sum game. What I shift over to taxes gets my Market/Bank/Grocer to do more, but my Library/University/Observatory to do less. Thus, properly updated there is no wasted capacity...I think you can end up with the same bonus to the coins side as you can to the beaker side.

I think it is early in my exploration of this balance, so I am actually not sure exactly where to go with it. My current gut-feel is that coins are a bit more flexible than beakers. As Vel said, at some point you need to be able to DO SOMETHING with those techs. Coins allow you to upgrade, rush production, and expand when you need to. Maybe 80% is too much, maybe 90% is better....but I'm pretty much certain that 100% isn't always optimal.

[kittenOFchaos]

Against the A.I my military average seems is typically appalling, but I don't worry about it in the least.

Typically the A.I has more cities than I and garrisons them with large forces. I put my whole army pretty much where it matters confident that I can deal with the enemy on my frontiers, not in the interior.

Interestingly the only time this has differed was my first game where my army was centered in the interior to bash the skulls of unhappy people to make them, happy. Lost a city on the frontier, until my army plodded to the front and drove the Mongols to extinction at which point my once partners in Mongol genocide (the Aztecs) turned upon me...much fun was had.

I reckon always by effective strength, in that the A.I will always be far weaker than what the stats imply. Better to build infrastructure unless you are in a period of going for the kill.

[Hayden]

my experience playing a few games recently on monarch I think it was (2 above noble), is that no matter how hard I tried to be everyone friend, someone would always try to stab me in the back. Many times I had a +4 relationship with someone only for them to land 8 or so units next to one of my cities and declare war. Surprise, surprise its always next to a city that is under-defended. Hence my new motto if I want to avoid confrontations is to always have a big enough military so as to discourage the AI attacking me. I can go through an entire game not using my military as long as its large enough.

[RalphTrickey]

[SIZE=1] I can go through an entire game not using my military as long as its large enough.

That sounds like a good use for the military! It also sounds like a Zen thing

[khumak]

What percentage of your economy to devote to money depends on what your civic choices and goals are. It can be extremely worthwhile to devote greater than 20% of your economy to money if you're using Universal Suffrage because it allows to you massively speed up your completion of key buildings and easily upgrade all of your military units to the most current model. It also gives an easy production boost to every city that has any towns due to the 1 shield per town bonus.

In the late stages of the game I tend to go with a mix of about 60% research/20% culture/20% money. That gives me about 700-1000 gold per turn coming in which I use to upgrade my units and buy buildings in my newly conquered cities. Typically by this time every "core" city in my empire has every single useful building that it's possible to build because I have rushed it with Universal Suffrage. The increased modifiers that this gives all of my cities more than makes up for the initial loss in research because every single city has all of the research boosting buildings as well as all of the money boosters.

Early in the game I agree that it's best to keep your research slider as close to 100% as possible.

[Cort Haus]

What level do you play at, khumak?