Question on Archer and Organized Civs

[gmsh1964]

Hello,

I have three questions I was hoping someone could help me with.

1) I have read in several posts that Archers are weak vs Mounted., or something like Mounted are strong vs Archers. I do not see that in Civilopedia? I only see Immortals as having an advantage over Archers. Any information on this?

2) Organized Civs. I saw a few posts stating that they pay less Inflation. Is that correct?

3) Organized Civs. I am not a math whizz, but I played around a little bit with Organized Civs. Do they also get a discount on Distance and # of Cities and Supply etc.., (all expenses)? Or discounts only on the costs for the five civic selections (which is labelled Civics Up Keep)? Based on my limited unskilled tests, I would say it is a discount on all expenses and not just civics UP KEEP. Any thoughts?

Thanks

[Proteus_MST]

1) Probably just because they have a strength of 3 and a movement of 1 compared to the strength of 4 and movement of 2 of even the weakest mounted unit (chariot). And all of the higher rated mounted units (horse acher upwards) even have (aside from their higher strength) immunity against first strikes, therefore taking away one of the advantages archers have (i.e. 1 first strike).

[sabrewolf]

welcome
by the way, for questions there is a civ4-help forum.

but anyhow
1) none of them have any particular advantage or disadvantage. however, archers will lose pretty often to horse archers, whereas spearmen do get a 100% bonus versus mounted units (and thereby should be able to win most of the time)

2) possible, but not sure. i never really bothered checking that. the main difference is less civics cost, which have been raised in patch 1.52

3) again, not sure, but i think they only get the cheaper civics cost. having less distance corruption would in fact make them very expansionistic... which already exists

[Enigma_Nova]

Expansive is a trait better suited to growing your existing cities to high population, +2 health, Granaries, Harbors.
I should know, I play an Expansive Civ!
<--- Bismarck laughs at something

[gmsh1964]

Thanks for the responses, but still no definite answers to #2 and #3.

The only reason I ask is because my un-scientific test was a Hot Seat game against myself using an Organized Civ and one without Org. After three cities for both civilizations (all 3 same distance apart in each Civ) the Org Civ without question had less costs in every category (except inflation because that had not kicked in for either side yet). Once again, I am not a math whizz or a scientist, so I may be missing something and my test may be flawed, but this did happen.

[Mergle]

I think civics cost scales with number of cities, so an organised civ will be saving more (on civics costs) with more cities. This may be the effect you're seeing?

[gmsh1964]

Hi Mergle.

I could not substantiate what you just said in the CIVilopedia either. But even if you are correct, I experienced reductions in ALL expenses (I realize my test may suck), not just CIVICS.

I am not smart enough to know how to test this further, if I was, I would. I have no idea how some of you guys look at code.., etc.., Must be nice to have a brain.

[sabrewolf]

the best way to test it is to create a scenario. generate a random world with just you and no AIs and no barbarians that could influence the game.
chose an organised civ and an "unorganised" one which start with the same techs. for instance asoka (org) vs. ghandi (non-org) or mao (org) vs. qui shi (non-org).
give yourself a few settlers to start with.

then play... make sure you note where exactly you place then and which turn (if you already place them in the scenario editor you don't need to care about that).

like that you'll know about the city maintenance cost.


for the units: just give yourself lots of units and see the costs.

for inflation: give yourself lots of techs to see when inflation kicks in. maybe you'll need big cities first (also do-able in the editor)


there are some extreme testers who actually figured out how the corruption formula in civ3 worked. that earned them a developer job at firaxis

[gmsh1964]

sabrewolf.., great post. No way I can do all that.

I was hoping one of those code-reading guys on here could check that out. I am not being lazy.., I just cannot grasp all that stuff you said.

Thanks, Glenn

[Enigma_Nova]

Though I'm not being lazy, I just can't grasp how to explain it in terms a newbie can understand - and I'm just hoping one of the gmsh1964 people on this board can figure it out for themselves.

Thanks, EN.

[xxFlukexx]

2) Well technically you do, but not really. I mean For non-organized, let's say you pay 100 gpt for civics and have +50% inflation, you pay 100 + 50 = 150gpt. For an organized civ you pay 50 gpt for civics and +50% inflation so you pay 50+ 25 = 75 gpt. So you still get 1/2 the cost, because organized happens before inflation makes the trait more attractive.

3) To my knowledge Organized has no benefit to City upkeep. I kinda remeber seeing this as I can place a city like 5 tiles away from my cap and receive both -3 gpt with an organized civ and a non-organized civ.

[gmsh1964]

xxFlukexx,

I wondered what Inflation was based on. So it is based on Expenses and not Income -- makes sense. Excellent and thanks.

So as far as a benefit from Org (other then 50% less CIVICS), the inflation thing is a late game benefit.

Hmmm, if Org affected all Costs (distance and # of cities), I would see that being a kick-butt advantage to have. But if it is just less CIVICS costs and Inflation later on.., it does not seem to to be the best trait. Not bad, but not great.

Thanks again.