Expenses under the Microscope, value of Organized etc.

[xxFlukexx]

Originally posted by The_Paladin
Creative - equivalent to stonehenge or founding a religion (roughly). Stonehenge is only 120 production in one city and is available pretty early... so not a huge benefit fot the creative trait here... or founding a religion which a lot of people do anyway because it has a lot of other benefits... again making the equivalency cost pretty low.

If the creative person also builds stonehenge or a religion, do they get a great additional culture bonus? Eh not really... they only got +2 culture to begin with and now they got an extra +1 culture... ok but not great.

As defender of the Creative trait I must respond to this post on the first page of the thread.

Creative is good. How can you possibly say stonehenge is equivalent to Creative? Completely different. You have to research mysticism to get Stonehenge, with Creative you don't. +1 culture per turn is not the same as +2 culture per turn. I know the number 1 is close to the number 2, but 2 is +100% better than 1, it's true! This means you get that first and second and third border expansion out asap. Founding a religion is equivalent to Creative? Huh? Missionaries cost 40 hammers each and you have to wait for the religion to spread either naturally or via missionaries, creative works instantly. And I dunno about you but there is only a certain amount of land and resources when the map is made and I'd rather have a settler and 1/3 of a worker out than Stonehenge, the difference between snagging a great city site and having the AI beat you to it by a few turns is a huge cost imo.

Thing you got right is that it isn't that great to build Stonehenge while being Creative, unless you want a Great Prophet out asap for some reason.

If you've ever been sandwiched by 2 creative AIs on a map like Pangaea, you'd know the power of the Creative. It is extremely hard to overtake a Creative Civs borders without Free Speech, Hermitage and Cathedrals. In the early game the only way to get culture is through obelisks and libraries and libraries are 90 hammers.

Pacifism is a good equivalent for Philo since it does the exact same thing and the cost modifiers usually balance out if you are at peace. But no way can you say Creative is the same as building stonehenge, not even "roughly'". I once planted a city near an enemies iron that was 2 spaces away from his newly founded city. Oh sorry, creative takes that square in 5 turns and no way is he ever going to retake that square peacefully....I'd like to see Stonehenge do that.

Long live Creative and long live Cathy!

You may now go back to your weird Organized vs Financial debate and how good Spiritual actually is. I think all the traits are pretty fairly balanced, you guys are strange.

[raguas]

Greetings all -- long-time reader, first-time poster here.

I have enjoyed this discussion thus far, and I would like to add my two commerce to the analysis regarding SPI -- which would make the comparisons even more difficult to quantify.

Among all the traits, I believe Spiritual is the only one that enables a player to play around with Diplomacy.

Do you need Lizzie to declare war on Germany? Switch to her religion and/or her favorite civic. Then try to bribe her. Not guaranteed to work, but if you're SPI there's not too much cost/risk involved so it might be worth a shot. If you're not Spiritual, you probably might not even try it because of the anarchy when you're switching, and switching back.

Or thinking in terms of Vel's 1a workshop, where he didn't adopt the state religion yet because he wanted to trade some early techs and did not want to antagonize anyone... if SPI, adopt the religion right away for the bonuses. Then, after Alphabet is researched (or whatever it is you are waiting for), switch to whatever is needed (or no religion, if that's what would work at the time).

Of course none of these advantages and possibilities are new to you guys/gals... but I don't think I've seen them in the "computations" above. (And to be honest, I can't figure out how to begin to quantify these).

As for frequency of switching civics... while it's true that the average game might not involve that many switches, I posit that if you are Spiritual, then you will switch much more often.

To illustrate:

You're preparing for war, cranking out units. So you switch to Police State, Vassalage, Theocracy.

Conquered enough cities? Switch back to Org. Rel. to make those courthouses and granaries. (or whatever is appropriate).

Again, none of these insights I'm offering are new to any of you, probably. But I do switch quite a lot throughout the course of a game (certainly more than 20 times if I'm Spiritual).

[Alkis2]

Spiritual gives you flexibility there is no doubt about that. There are many scenarios, for example let's suppose a rival civ launches a surprise attack and a border city is in danger. If you are Spiritual you can change to Nationhood (if you have that civic) draft units from nearby cities and defend successfully.

Anyway, the main reason I take Spi is that tech they start with. Mysticism is huge.

[Alkis2]

Very nice post xxFlukexx defending the creative trait. (which I never take)

[fed1943]

Great thread.IMHO,The_Paladin showed the begin of the way:to measure a trait'bonus by measuring the cost of the always possible compensation.
But,I think nobody spoke of the time value;trying to explain myself:two of my cities have a health cap of 6,I build the 2 aquaducts,one the city had 6 unhealth and the other 4 unhealth(obviously the same result);but,with the creative thing is not the same,because the bonus is per turn;the agressive versus barracks:the agressive can begin build military ealier;(BTW,industrious is stone and marble connected,isn't it?);finantial increase commerce as the number of cottages and some improved resources,since the moment they exist and are worked.
So,I think that "turns cost"must also be considerated.
I'm not trying to do it,because I know I'm unable to do it.
Best regards,

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by The_Paladin
Looks like I opened a can of worms here . There's been a flurry of posts since I last came through here.

@Shaka II - good analysis re cheaper courthouses and yeah that's probably a good way to look at them, that a non-org civ would build approx. half as many of them.

The only thing is that if you replace ORG with something else, then you will have another cheaper building... say you replace it with IND and you get cheaper forges.. now those cheaper forges can build those courthouses faster... thus giving you a few more of them. So to me its almost impossible to compare apples to apples with traits at least. Though I do freely admit that I think your numbers are much closer to the truth than my own.

The same thing with the buildings too - again I agree that courthouses are better than harbours... except if you also have the great lighthouse... then harbours are better than courthouses. Trying to analyze this game can give you nightmares because everything depends on everything else are really there is never a wrong answer... so my solution in the end is to put out a proposal here and hope someone can catch my mistakes, if I made any .

I realized after I went through my example, that it was futile to try and include courthouses, especially given the example I was using, where I captured as many as I built. So, neglecting courthouses, the net savings for my ORG civ is 14% of total income instead of the 16% my convoluted example states. So, in that era (researching physics), that is a typical number for an early domineering sort of player. Things are apt to be much different for the stay at home builder.

Originally posted by The_Paladin
Your analysis has been scientifically sound, Alkis2 and Shaka II, but I might also suggest that you should look at expenses earlier in the game as well. I realize that's a lot of work and you might not have that data but I think it might grant some very valuable insight.

My personal feeling re: financial vs organizes is that financial has a slight edge in the early game if you really focus on it as there is no real way to focus on maxing organized in the early game. Around the time you get 3 or 4 cities organized starts to come back to even again.

Now since org picks up courthouses faster than financial gets banks, it will probably go a little ahead for the player focused on courthouses allowing for a bit better expansion for the org player. Again financial will pull even again though once more cottages grow and it too expands after setting up its more expensive courthourses.

It's a flip-floppy, hand-wavy analysis to be sure, but my feeling is financial, when maxed = organized, when maxed, at least on emperor+ difficulty. They both can do great things when they are focused on and neither one is really better than the other.

On lower difficulties however, financial >> organized (sorry, >> = much much greater for the non-math folks out there).

I agree. Organized really starts to kick in as that expansion above 4 cities or so starts. As you say, financial and organized probably each have periods where one outdoes the other. But also, cheap early buildings would seem to me to be the better deal, since their effects are felt over a much longer portion of the game. I usually only build banks and universities in the big cities, which might number between 7 and 10, while courthouses are built in about twice as many, since it's CoL that enables them. So, the integral of the net financial gain must be considered, not just the benefit at any particular point in the game. But early benefits must be weighted more than later. If one is going all the way to a science win, then I would agree that financial probably outweighs organized over the long haul. But not necessarily so for the domination/conquest type of play.

I'm waiting for someone who has the patience to count up all of those extra coins in worked squares that a financial civ gets and work in the effect of city improvements to get us the real answer as to how good financial is.

[The_Paladin]

xxFlukexx - you make good points about creative. As I've said the comparisons of trait equivalents are simplifications, simply because there are so many factors and ways to use the traits that it is impossible to actually determine a 100% equivalency that fits all cases.

I also agree with you that I'm strange. It was necessary for me to get where I am today (and no, not the loony bin .

Some minor comments (not complaints) about what you said.

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
How can you possibly say stonehenge is equivalent to Creative? Completely different. You have to research mysticism to get Stonehenge, with Creative you don't.
+1 culture per turn is not the same as +2 culture per turn. I know the number 1 is close to the number 2, but 2 is +100% better than 1, it's true! This means you get that first and second and third border expansion out asap.

Stonehenge, to me, is the closest thing you can get to creative... no its not exact and yes 2 culture is bigger than 1. However stonehenge is the only structure that instantly grants you culture in a new city, as the creative trait does. You could say its equivalent to a free obelisk in every city but you have to build them. You could also say its equivalent to a library in every city but they also grant a very nice research bonus that creative certainly does not. Therefore, to me, the closest thing was stonehenge and that's why I picked it.

A little off topic: I could be wrong here - maybe someone can post and clarify this - but do obelisks build by stonehenge double their culture value to +2 after 1000 years? I know regular ones do but do the "free" ones?

Anyway back to the point. Yes you do have to research mysticism and that is part of the creative bonus. Yes you have to build stonehenge and that is also part of the creative bonus. However the same could be said for all the equivalencies. You have to build a barracks with aggressive. You have to research printing press to get the financial equivalency (which isn't exactly equivalent either... but its close). And even the one you said was good, PHI, you have to research and use pacifism before it is eqivlanet.

But your point is well taken - I did simplify the traits when I did the analysis.

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
Founding a religion is equivalent to Creative? Huh? Missionaries cost 40 hammers each and you have to wait for the religion to spread either naturally or via missionaries, creative works instantly. And I dunno about you but there is only a certain amount of land and resources when the map is made and I'd rather have a settler and 1/3 of a worker out than Stonehenge, the difference between snagging a great city site and having the AI beat you to it by a few turns is a huge cost imo.

Thing you got right is that it isn't that great to build Stonehenge while being Creative, unless you want a Great Prophet out asap for some reason.

Actually, and people may argue with me here, but I would say founding a religion is actually quite a bit better than creative. Again I just chose it because, like stonehenge, you don't have to do anything to expand your border - you could just wait for your religion to spread (or build a missionary - I'd just wait for the most part within my own territory). You only get 1 culture per turn from this but in exchange for the second culture you get +1 gold / turn once you get your holy city.

But yes again religions aren't 100% equivalent... its just another thing I thought of that was close.

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
If you've ever been sandwiched by 2 creative AIs on a map like Pangaea, you'd know the power of the Creative. It is extremely hard to overtake a Creative Civs borders without Free Speech, Hermitage and Cathedrals. In the early game the only way to get culture is through obelisks and libraries and libraries are 90 hammers.

Hmm.. yes this is a situation that creative would be good. However I might point out that if you are really that close to these AIs on both sides then you probably have one heck of a bigger problem than border expansion!

In this case making the cities you get more productive is just as good as creative. So making those cottages better for you (financial) or lowering upkeep (organized) or speeding a military to take their cities (aggressive) are all good options too.

As soon as your borders touch you've got negative relations with no way to improve them (at least that early - no open borders, no tech trading, no gifts). So you may be able to nab that extra resource... until they try to nab your city. Creative will help you hold the border and even defend your cities with the added defence bonus so it is good here.

However you can't sit with those few cities "holding the border" forever and expect to win. You either need a military (most likely) or to expand someplace else (unlikely if you are really sandwiched). Creative doesn't help you with that at all.

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
I once planted a city near an enemies iron that was 2 spaces away from his newly founded city. Oh sorry, creative takes that square in 5 turns and no way is he ever going to retake that square peacefully....I'd like to see Stonehenge do that.

Why couldn't stonehenge do that? This civ you are talking about can't be creative or it would've got that iron before you. So it has 0 culture per turn. Stonehenge would give you 1. Maybe not 5 turns but in 10 turns you would have that iron and it would be hard to take back for that civ. If they build an obelisk they would be even. If they built a library they would be ahead but by that point they would be ahead if you were creative as well so eventually, peacefully, they could take it back. Yes creative is better by +1 and it acts quicker but Stonehenge still would work.

Some positive points about creative that I like about it.
Creative helps you out in the early game so that amplifies its bonus... and the Stonehenge equivalency is also required to be build early game if its built at all. This increases the value of creative quite a bit and can save you an extra settler or some warriors or whatever.

However personally I don't use it. Creative doesn't really help expand my capital borders... It helps with my second city and maybe my third but shortly after that I have secured some method of obtaining culture (either libraries or a religion) and I would used them to achieve the expansion.

There are two cases - either you start surrounded by people or you don't.

If you do then finding enough land is going to be a problem and creative might help here but so too would the other traits - either by making the land you've got better or helping you fight a war.

If you don't start beside someone then you can wait for that extra border - you just have to place your second and maybe third city without getting a rapid border expansion. If I really need it, obelisks in one or two cities aren't that bad but I have yet to build one so...

And 2 culture a turn simply isn’t enough to help win the game by culture. At best it saves you 2 or 3 turns.

I used to love Cathy (ok for those of you who have read her story I don't mean that literally ) but I find I can almost always do without creative... where I can't do without one of the other traits nearly as easily.

This is just my opinion so it doesn’t necessarily mean much though so I mean no offence xxFlukexx... I just happen to disagree.

Edit: One change that I would like to see to creative to make it something I would actually take would be to give it a growing bonus over the course of the game. That is, say, it starts by giving you +2 culture per turn but once you enter, say, the classical era it starts giving you +2 + 0.25 per pop. point / turn in a city and later, say in the modern era, it gives +2 + 2 per pop point / turn in a city. Of course I'm just picking numbers randomly and they would need balancing... but at least then it would be more of the go-to trait for culture wins... frankly right now I wouls say IND is better for culture wins (or maybe PHI if you use a lot of artists).

[The_Paladin]

Originally posted by raguas
Greetings all -- long-time reader, first-time poster here.

Nice first post . Welcome to the boards.

Yes SPI = adaptive. You can do a lot of fun things that non-SPI's never could. And you are right... very hard to measure an equivalency to it.

My personal favourite trait is PHI for much the same reason. I find that I can adapt it to either build the pyramids early, grab CS with a prophet, build an academy with a scientist or whatever.

So maybe FIN = best money trait, ORG = best expansion trait (sorry expansive... but I'm afraid its true), SPI = best adaptive trait, and maybe PHI = jack of all trades trait, not best in any but helps with anything.

Originally posted by fed1943
So,I think that "turns cost"must also be considerated.

Indeed it should be. Early bonus = better bonus. A few posts are starting to try to incorporate this but its tough. I think in the end we can do some rough analysis to get a feel for the traits value... then improve or devalue them by hand based on our experiences.

The best we can do really is just to say this trait is good for this, this other one is good for this. Its hard to say A > B always... cause that's simply not true. A gun always beats a sword... unless you are out of bullets .

[EternalSpark]

I perfer Organized over Financial. To use a tree analogy: its annoying to be getting a lot of water from your roots, only to be bleeding a decent amount of it.

(I tend to make a lot more bases than I prolly should.)

Me, the longer I can keep myself at 100% in the early game, the better I tend to do. Org civs, if my experience is correct, has more time before the "building this base puts you into the negative".

Of course, F+O is simply bassass.

[Shaka II]

Yeah, time to play Washington again. But that darn late UU. I guess since the U.S. is a late arrival in real life, it's only appropriate. And their starting techs are not so good. But these help balance out the strength of having both organized and financial.

[Alkis2]

Just an info on the obelisks you get from Stonehenge. Unfortunately they dissappear when Stonehenge becomes obsolute. The others stay.

I discovered another thing looking at old saves. I hope I can explain it with my poor English. When you compare an org civ with one that is not organized at about 1500 AD the difference is about 10% of total commerce. That's what I found looking at several saves.

Now, the interesting thing, if the non organized civ is Financial the difference is not that great. Why? Because the Financial civ has more commerce. Civic upkeep does not tax your income, it's just that, an upkeep. So for a Financial civ the extra pay is a smaller percentage of his total commerce. This seems obvious if you think about it but I was also able to confirm it looking at several saves. Financial with many cottages etc make the difference very small, very early. In a game of mine Elizabeth's extra pay was about 8% of total commerce as early as 1270 AD. That game was on Monarch level though.

On Emperor you start with that dreadfull -2 so organized's early advantage is clear. But with cottages and working of water tiles the financial civ may sometimes research better at 60% while the organized researches at 80% for example. I mean in the ancient era, where one click on the slider isn't much.

The organized skill works best if you are a conqueror. Shaka's numbers don't compare with anything I ever had. He is a great warmonger, no doubt. I think the max number of cities I ever had was about 14

"Stay at home builder" that describes me very well. I still like the organized skill though.

[Shaka II]

I don't know about "great" warmonger , but that's my preferred style of play, well, builder/warmonger really. In my opinion, you can't really be a civ player if you're not a builder deep down. But there's something about the strategy and movement of pieces, like chess on a grand scale, that's a lot of fun.

I agree with your assesssment of the lower percentage that organized shows as a ratio of total revenue for the financial civ, but that is to be expected. The 14% that I calculated was in 1530AD as I was researching physics on pangea/emperor/Japanese(AGG/ORG)/marathon game. Marathon has the effect of speeding up unit build in relation to tech, which is better for the domination player, so I thought it better to say where I was in the tech chart rather than the actual year.

It's not surprising that 14% for a larger, organized, empire would show up as 8% to 10% for you as a smaller, financial civ. We still can't determine which is better though without doing some counting of coins and running that through the city improvement multipliers at the typical slider rate to determine which is better, financial or organized. I expect that it's quite variational with playing style, map type, difficulty level.