Announcement

**OzzyKP** · February 10, 2006, 19:56

Very interesting. Good work

**JackRudd** · February 10, 2006, 20:08

Seems reasonable. Despite its name, the major advantage of "Financial" is not in its cash-generating qualities, it's in its research benefits.

**Shaka II** · February 10, 2006, 21:42

Originally posted by JackRudd
Seems reasonable. Despite its name, the major advantage of "Financial" is not in its cash-generating qualities, it's in its research benefits.

But the research comes from commerce allocated via the slider. The best case example for financial is when science and culture slider is 0, and the building multipliers work on the full commerce. Even for this best case, organized seems to win out or at least be equal to financial for these expansionist examples.

As the slider is brought to 100% spending, organized can be dramatically higher, since there is nothing left for the building multiplier to work on. Those +1 gold squares have no multiplier.

Am I missing something? I think that for the builder with perhaps only 10 cities or so (big ones), the results are likely to be strongly in favor of financial. So, I need a builder's game file.

I did check one of my games at several points and financial seemed better for the first two, maybe three cities, but after that organized was better. Maybe someone can do a reality check on this.

**The_Paladin** · February 10, 2006, 22:37

Originally posted by Shaka II
But the research comes from commerce allocated via the slider. The best case example for financial is when science and culture slider is 0, and the building multipliers work on the full commerce. Even for this best case, organized seems to win out or at least be equal to financial for these expansionist examples.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. Why is it best for financial when the science and culture sliders are set to 0%? I mean if science is at 50% and culture is at 0, 50% of the extra commerce from financial goes to beakers and 50% goes to gold, both then get multiplied through separate buildings multipliers... Sure you don't get as much gold but you get extra beakers... both are important.

As the slider is brought to 100% spending, organized can be dramatically higher, since there is nothing left for the building multiplier to work on. Those +1 gold squares have no multiplier.

But the +1 extra commerce (not gold just to be clear) will be converted to science in this case so its still going through a multiplier... just the science one istead of the gold one.

Maybe you are just trying to compare apples to apples (i.e. gold saved from org vs. gold granted from fin) and then I can see what you are saying but I just wanted to ask because I wasnt sure.

-----------------

This is excellent work, BTW, Shaka II. I think what would be really nice, actually, would be to set up a way to test the benefits of organized for an empire of 1 - 40 cities (all size 10 for argument sake) and then you could calculate how many worked tiles need to be granting the financial bonus with stanard multipliers for each city level. The standard multiplier could be +75% for an average across the empire... not all will be that high but some will have much higher gold / science multipliers. Then it doesn't actually matter what the science slider is set at - the averaged multiplier will take into account.

This wouldn't actually be that hard... you could manually create the cities in the world editor thing... let them grow to size 10 (I don't think the editor can change city sizes but I may be wrong) then check your upkeep savings. Write it down for each empire size destroying one city at a time in the editor. Then you could calcluate how many tiles would need to be worked.

For example when you 20 cities say you have 100 gold of savings from ORG. This means you need X tiles worked that get the financial bonus where X = 100 / 1.75 (the assumed average multiplier). In this case X = 57.

This average multiplier indirectly takes care of the progression over time thing too. Inflation goes up, increasing you savings, but so too does the multiplier. Therefore you should really only need to do this without worrying about inflation. Again its a simplification but it should give you a reasonable result.

This would tell us exactly how much of your empire need be devoted to cottages / coastal tiles in order for financial to be better / worse than organized, regardless of empire size.

Unfortunately I'm away from my main comp for quite a while so I can't do this but if someone wants to take up this torch I think it would be worthwhile.

**Blake** · February 10, 2006, 22:54

Organized is indeed good when you can get a high slider %age with a large empire - for example with shrine income and booty gold. It makes it a lot easier to neglect the gold multipliers. All you need to build are courthouses, which are handily cheap for organized.

It's my opinion that Financial is most strong for steady, sedated growth, where infrastructure keeps pace with expansion, such that the slider will be above 70% even without income from other sources.

Organized is good for the rapidly expanding empire, especially with the cheap courthouses. And even without the courthouses - consider that you start paying the civic bill the moment a city gets founded, org immediately goes to work reducing that expense. While financial doesn't kick in until the city is working the +2 comm tiles and (later) some multiplier infrastructure is in place.

So my assessment is that Organized is most useful while you're expanding, in a given stable empire org and fin might be quite close, or fin ahead, but for the expanding empire org will be superior. Some play styles support perpetual expansion (especially Tokugawa/Caesar domination victories) and organized is especially ideal for that.
The stagnating empire is one which is squandering organized, but making good use of financial.

**LDiCesare** · February 11, 2006, 05:13

You're usign Rep, Beau, Emanc, Free, Org
Organised Religion is quite expensive, what would the results be with Free religion? It's way cheaper, adds 10% science which is even more intersting for financial civs. Same for Beau, I guess it's bureaucracy, which is not my favorite civic end game and not the cheapest.
Organised will certainly work better than financial if you use expensive civics, but if you use cheaper ones the balance may be tilted towards financial.

**nbarclay** · February 11, 2006, 09:50

Shaka II, what difficulty level were you playing on in the games you analyzed? For identical empires, my understanding is that the Financial bonus is the same on all difficulty levels, while the Organized bonus is bigger on higher levels where civic upkeep costs are higher.

**Shaka II** · February 12, 2006, 00:57

Originally posted by The_Paladin

But the +1 extra commerce (not gold just to be clear) will be converted to science in this case so its still going through a multiplier... just the science one istead of the gold one.

Maybe you are just trying to compare apples to apples (i.e. gold saved from org vs. gold granted from fin) and then I can see what you are saying but I just wanted to ask because I wasnt sure.

Oops! I forgot about the science multipliers. JackRudd was right. That would even it out quite a bit. So, I suppose to do the problem correctly, that part of the equation has to be considered. To retrieve some useful data from the above examples, I'd say it's best to look at the case for the 0% slider, where the entire amount of financial civ extra coins go through the financial building multipliers.

So, for the Japanese game, not having the ORG trait would result in a loss of 158 gold, while having the financial trait would result in a benefit of 164 gold, putting financial slightly higher.

For the Incan game, having the ORG trait would result in a gain of 129 gold, and a loss of 112 if not FIN, putting organized slightly higher.

Note that these are end game results, the type of games where not all the building multipliers get built. The later one plays, with bigger, more developed cities (higher multipliers), financial becomes increasingly more effective.

Originally posted by The_Paladin

This is excellent work, BTW, Shaka II. I think what would be really nice, actually, would be to set up a way to test the benefits of organized for an empire of 1 - 40 cities (all size 10 for argument sake) and then you could calculate how many worked tiles need to be granting the financial bonus with stanard multipliers for each city level. The standard multiplier could be +75% for an average across the empire... not all will be that high but some will have much higher gold / science multipliers. Then it doesn't actually matter what the science slider is set at - the averaged multiplier will take into account.

Some of the problems encountered in modeling it is that the building multipliers are considerably higher for the large cities. For example, the extra coins for being financial in the 28 cities in the Incan game:

# city squares 2 or more | Building multiplier
6 1
1 0
3 0.75
4 0.5
1 0.5
9 0.75
5 0.75
8 0.75
0 0
6 0
4 1
4 0.75
2 0
0 0.5
2 0
2 0
1 0
0 0
1 0
1 0
0 0
0 0
2 0.75
0 0
3 0
2 0
5 0.75
0 0

Here are the extra coins and building multipliers for the 31 cities in the Japanese game:

# city squares 2 or more | Building multiplier
9 1
6 1
9 0.5
9 1
7 0
4 0
7 0
1 0
7 0.5
7 0.75
2 0.75
0 0.25
1 0
2 0
4 0.25
3 0
7 0
2 0.5
1 0.5
4 0
1 0
4 0.25
3 1
3 0
3 0
1 0.25
5 0.75
1 0
2 0
0 0
0 0

So if you were to use an average city size, city financial gain, and building multiplier, it would be wrong, unless it was a properly weighted average. For example, it isn't worth the cost to put a bank in a size 6 city, so players sort of intuitively decide which cities to put the universities, banks, etc, while the smaller cities may have no financial or science multipliers. Some of them were even just captured.

In the Incan games, the 28 city average coin benefit for being financial was 2.57 coins, and the average building multiplier was 0.31. Using these numbers, the benefit for the 0% slider case would be 2.57 * 1.31 = 94.5 coins, instead of the actual 112 coins. These are the incremental coins that the financial trait gains, not the full amount.

So, I think a real working example is the best. Take a real game at several points in the game and do the tally.

Originally posted by The_Paladin

This average multiplier indirectly takes care of the progression over time thing too. Inflation goes up, increasing you savings, but so too does the multiplier. Therefore you should really only need to do this without worrying about inflation. Again its a simplification but it should give you a reasonable result.

This would tell us exactly how much of your empire need be devoted to cottages / coastal tiles in order for financial to be better / worse than organized, regardless of empire size.

Unfortunately I'm away from my main comp for quite a while so I can't do this but if someone wants to take up this torch I think it would be worthwhile.

I suspect that inflation was put in there to offset the growing effect of building multipliers. It would be a way of balancing the ORG trait, tweaking it to keep pace with financial growth. Probably it's best to take the inflation value into account, until that is verified. It's a strait forward calculation.

Like Blake says, I think organized yields more coins under certain playing conditions, such as when expanding an empire, particularly one that doesn't have many of the building multipliers. For a more compact civ playing for a SS win, I think financial would be much stronger, but we'll have to get an example.

I checked both of the Japanese game and the Incan game at 500BC, 0AD, 500AD, and 1000AD. The two traits were very well balanced, getting more in favor of organized for the Incan game as time went on. The Japanese game had organized slightly better at the end game, while the Incan game had organized better.

nbarclay - these were both emperor games. Results might be different at other levels. Check Blake's thread.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
You're usign Rep, Beau, Emanc, Free, Org
Organised Religion is quite expensive, what would the results be with Free religion? It's way cheaper, adds 10% science which is even more intersting for financial civs. Same for Beau, I guess it's bureaucracy, which is not my favorite civic end game and not the cheapest.
Organised will certainly work better than financial if you use expensive civics, but if you use cheaper ones the balance may be tilted towards financial.

Organized Religion is expensive, but so were the buildings I was working on, factories, banks, grocers, etc.. That 25% is worth it while you're building. I did just switch from Beaurocracy to Free Speech, and to from Free Market to State Property, both which saved quite a bit. The moment I emerged from anarchy, I won! I hung onto Beaurocracy too long, which was a lesson learned. The game was over in 1562AD, so all of the final civics were not reached. It may very well be that in the end game for a more "civilized" civ, that financial wins out. All in all, the organized trait seems about even to somewhat better at handling expenses for the expansionist civ. I think the thing that tips the balance in favor of the ORG civ, is that courthouses are available much earlier than banks, so their benefits are realized over a much longer time period, a critical time period too. A domination type game may be over not that long after banks have been built, and not fully amortized.

I just finished a game as Mao to satisify my yearning for the builder/warmonger type game. I built the Great Pyramid, Taj Mahal, and the Kremlin, and captured most of the rest. This time I was more careful about switching from Beaurocracy at the point in the game. The 100% cultural benefits weighed heavily on that consideration too, even if I took a temporary hit in science/income.

I'll let someone else take a try at figuring out which is better for the mostly builder case.

**Shaka II** · February 12, 2006, 15:11

Here’s a follow up to the initial (flawed) analysis, taking the Incan game and correcting that example to include the effects of the science multipliers. I went through the list of cities and jotted down their science multipliers along with their financial multipliers, in addition to the base commerce and the extra coins that the financial trait yielded for having squares of 2 commerce or more. There are two corrections to the previous analysis, one being the addition of the science multipliers, but the other is to compare the benefit of having the ORG trait, it’s necessary to evaluate the additional science slider rate allowed. This requires knowledge of the base commerce for each city in addition to the financial and building multipliers to calculate the cost in coins due a 10% slider rate increase and the corresponding increase in beakers. From this, the number of 10% slider increments allowed by the ORG savings can be calulated along with the corresponding benefit in beakers.

Another point is that you can take your benefit as all science, all financial, or some combination of the two. As the table below indicates, the FIN trait yielded 112 coins or 103 beakers for the Incans. From that you can see what the trade off in converting from coins to beakers. If the Incans had the ORG trait, it would have resulted in a savings of 129 coins in 1762AD with 28 cities. This can be compared directly to the case of having a 0% slider for the FIN trait, so a 129 coins/112 coins = 1.15 ratio benefit is realized.

To determine the resulting benefit if all 129 coins gained were converted to science (if I had the ORG trait), it was necessary to determine how many coins a slider increment of 10% corresponds to and convert these to the equivalence in beakers. The calc showed that 10% slider increment results in a loss of 96.8 coins, so the 129 coins for having the ORG trait would allow 1.33 positve slider increments. Converting this to beakers yields 126.1 beakers, so roughly one to one.

Comparing the benefit of being ORG vs. FIN if running 100% science, the ratio is 126.1 beakers/103 beakers = 1.22.

So the benefit in coins is 15% or the benefit in science is 22% for having ORG vs. FIN traits. This is probably a pessimistic case for the FIN trait, but that was part of the intent, to show when ORG is superior. If we were running a typical 50% science rate (0% culture), the benefit would be half way in between or about 18%, which is quite a bit.

Financial trait benefit in coins or beakers at 0% and 100% slider
Base commerce | # 2 coins or more | fin multiplier | sci multiplier | 100% coins | 100% beakers
69 6 1.00 2.20 12.00 19.20
13 1 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50
18 3 0.75 0.50 5.25 4.50
41 4 0.50 0.00 6.00 4.00
13 1 0.50 0.60 1.50 1.60
67 9 0.75 0.50 15.75 13.50
35 5 0.75 0.50 8.75 7.50
50 8 0.75 0.25 14.00 10.00
8 0 0.00 0.25 0.00 0.00
29 6 0.00 0.00 6.00 6.00
42 4 1.00 0.50 8.00 6.00
28 4 0.75 0.50 7.00 6.00
14 2 0.00 0.00 2.00 2.00
11 0 0.50 1.00 0.00 0.00
11 2 0.00 0.25 2.00 2.50
26 2 0.00 0.00 2.00 2.00
12 1 0.00 0.00 1.00 1.00
9 0 0.00 0.50 0.00 0.00
17 1 0.00 0.25 1.00 1.25
8 1 0.00 0.00 1.00 1.00
11 0 0.00 0.25 0.00 0.00
5 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
23 2 0.75 0.50 3.50 3.00
6 0 0.00 0.75 0.00 0.00
14 3 0.00 0.00 3.00 3.00
13 2 0.00 0.00 2.00 2.00
37 5 0.75 0.00 8.75 5.00
1 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Gain for financial trait = 112(coins) or 103(beakers)

Organized trait benefit in coins or beakers
Base commerce | # city squares 2 or more | fin multiplier | sci multiplier | 10% fin gain (base) | 10% sci gain (base)
69 6 1 2.2 13.8 22.08
13 1 0 0.5 1.3 1.95
18 3 0.75 0.5 3.15 2.7
41 4 0.5 0 6.15 4.1
13 1 0.5 0.6 1.95 2.08
67 9 0.75 0.5 11.725 10.05
35 5 0.75 0.5 6.125 5.25
50 8 0.75 0.25 8.75 6.25
8 0 0 0.25 0.8 1
29 6 0 0 2.9 2.9
42 4 1 0.5 8.4 6.3
28 4 0.75 0.5 4.9 4.2
14 2 0 0 1.4 1.4
11 0 0.5 1 1.65 2.2
11 2 0 0.25 1.1 1.375
26 2 0 0 2.6 2.6
12 1 0 0 1.2 1.2
9 0 0 0.5 0.9 1.35
17 1 0 0.25 1.7 2.125
8 1 0 0 0.8 0.8
11 0 0 0.25 1.1 1.375
5 0 0 0 0.5 0.5
23 2 0.75 0.5 4.025 3.45
6 0 0 0.75 0.6 1.05
14 3 0 0 1.4 1.4
13 2 0 0 1.3 1.3
37 5 0.75 0 6.475 3.7
1 0 0 0 0.1 0.1

Total base commerce = 631.00
10% slider gain = 96.80(coins) or 94.79(beakers)
Number of 10% slider increments allowed by ORG = 1.33
science boost allowed by ORG # of 10% slider increments = 126.09

After digesting all of this, the high science player might be tempted to ignore markets, grocers, and banks in favor of libraries, universities, observatories, and laboratories, but it seldom occurs that the slider can be kept at 100%, unless your shrine income is large, or you're very successful at selling techs to the AI. Usually they run out of money at some point though, and that no longer works. Markets and grocers are required for happiness and health, and banks are required for the times that you can't run at 100% science, which is most of time. Probably 60% to 70% slider rate is typical for most of the game. Either way, the organized trait shows significant benefits in cash or beakers for the Incan game.

Now for the Japanese game, it's slightly better for the FIN civ at 0% slider rate, though I didn't look at the 100% slider rate to count the equivalence in beakers. Taking courthouses into consideration, I built 18 courthouses, while the AI built 7, for a total of 25 out of 31 cities. I can only take credit for the 18 that I built, which is 58% of the cities. But the cheaper courthouses accumulate maintenance savings over a very long time period, and the distances involved for the expansionist incur large maintenance costs. So, the cheap courthouses are likely to be a larger benefit for the ORG trait than cheap banks are for the FIN trait, further strengthening the hand of the expansionist ORG player. Naturally, the benefit of having cheaper courthouses is much greater in an early finish conquest or domination game, and less great in an SS, time, diplomatic, or culture victory game, where banks have time to fully amortize.

**couerdelion** · February 13, 2006, 08:06

Re: Organized better than Financial?

Originally posted by Shaka II
To be fair, a test like this would have to be run at various points in the game, but checking some of these, organized seems to consistently out do financial, except for the very beginning. Again, this is for the expansion type player, results for the pure builder or builder/warmonger are apt to be quite different.

I think this is one key point although I also wonder whether or not the style of game has tainted the results somewhat. Organised’s benefits really only start be noticeable when the civilisation starts significant expansion (ie the marginal gain from a new city is less than the costs). With a domination game, it is highly likely that you will be adopting an early conquest strategy and so even the financial trait will be struggling to carry the costs of the wider empire.

The gains from financial seem to be a little low. I would expect at least half the cities to have banks and probably all of these ought to be working, on average, five tiles with commerce of 2 or more. Half of these again will have market and grocers. Total gain from financial per turn

8 * 5 * 1.5 + 8 * 5 * 2 = 140

Wall Street and the other cities will make up around 60 more gold so you really ought to have 200+ gold from financial.

With regards to your analysis, I’m not sure that the comparison between the two should depend upon the slider (although it will depend on multipliers). Organised benefits appear in “the bottom line” while financial appear in the input level of commerce so the multipliers obviously sit between the two. However, the slider is going to be set with regard to a “target” gold surplus/deficit. The real comparison should be to determine the tech rate that gives the same surplus gold on financial as the organised trait would have under normal settings. In other words, take your target surplus under organised and then work out the tech rate under financial with the same surplus. Compare the science investment under each one.

**Shaka II** · February 13, 2006, 14:22

Re: Re: Organized better than Financial?

I should restate the percentages that I calculated were for the incremental percentages of being organized vs. financial, not the overall percentage gains, so comparing these gains to the total income, if the Incans were organized, the 129 coin savings, allowing 1.33 10% slider increments, is 13.3% of the total income, or 13.3% of the total beakers if 100% was spent on science.

Looking at the financial benefit that the Incans received, the 72 base commerce increment, due to being financial, becomes 112 coins for 0% science, representing 11.5% of the total income. Or, if converted all to science, it becomes 103 beakers, representing 10.9% of the total beakers at 100% science.

So, the overall difference in this somewhat pessimistic example, is 1.8% to 2.4% of the total income or science respectively. The courthouse factor is in addition to this, making organized stronger, throughout a very long period in the game.

Originally posted by couerdelion

I think this is one key point although I also wonder whether or not the style of game has tainted the results somewhat. Organised’s benefits really only start be noticeable when the civilisation starts significant expansion (ie the marginal gain from a new city is less than the costs). With a domination game, it is highly likely that you will be adopting an early conquest strategy and so even the financial trait will be struggling to carry the costs of the wider empire.

Yes, I'm pretty sure the style of game has tainted the results, but that's a typical game for an expansionist player on marathon.

Originally posted by couerdelion

The gains from financial seem to be a little low. I would expect at least half the cities to have banks and probably all of these ought to be working, on average, five tiles with commerce of 2 or more. Half of these again will have market and grocers. Total gain from financial per turn

8 * 5 * 1.5 + 8 * 5 * 2 = 140

From my post above, in the Incan game, the 28 city average coin benefit for being financial was 2.57 coins, and the average financial building multiplier was only 0.31, not the 5 coins and 0.5 to 1.0 multiplier you suggest. Look all of the 0's.

I would agree that for the pure builder, modern era player, with fully developed cities, you may be quite correct. However inflation also goes up, so one would have to run the numbers to be sure of what happens. If you have an appropriate file, I'll run the numbers through my spread sheet.

My 28 cities breakdown for financial and science multipliers:

Fin mult. | # of cities
1 - 2
0.75 - 7
0.5 - 3
0.25 - 0
0 - 16

Sci mult. | # of cities
2.2 -1
1.0 - 1
0.75 - 1
0.6 - 1
0.5 - 8
0.25 - 5
0 - 11

Originally posted by couerdelion

Wall Street and the other cities will make up around 60 more gold so you really ought to have 200+ gold from financial.

I didn't get to build Wall Street (I was 3 turns away from it in the Japanese game) or any factories in both games, but I did get to build Oxford. This is because of the early domination victory made possible largely because marathon speed allows my armies more turns to take over more cities, while tech advances more slowly. But I agree, if all of the science and financial multipliers were at there final levels, financial would probably look much better. So, it's great for the SS, culture, time, and diplomatic victory, but not so strong for the domination or conquest player. Also, consider that captured cities lose their cultural buildings like libraries and universities, though observatories are preserved. Also, many of the cities I capture get downsized, since cultural borders have closed in around them starving them down and/or their tile improvements have been destroyed. Look at the lists above to see what these multipliers were. There are a lot of 0's.

Originally posted by couerdelion

With regards to your analysis, I’m not sure that the comparison between the two should depend upon the slider (although it will depend on multipliers).

It depends on the sliders since the base commerce goes through a certain proportion of science multipliers to make beakers and financial multipliers to make income. The multipliers are not the same, though often they are pretty close. In the example I showed, the Incans base commerce produced slightly more income than science beakers. The multipliers for science and financial are listed above. The original slider analysis was flawed. If there is a slider combination in between 0% and 100% science, a figure of merit can be obtained by taking a simple ratio of the two proportions. For example, running at 50% science (0% culture), the benefit of ORG over FIN is half way in between or 1.8% relative to total income and beakers, combining the effects of beakers and coins together.

Originally posted by couerdelion

Organised benefits appear in “the bottom line” while financial appear in the input level of commerce so the multipliers obviously sit between the two. However, the slider is going to be set with regard to a “target” gold surplus/deficit. The real comparison should be to determine the tech rate that gives the same surplus gold on financial as the organised trait would have under normal settings. In other words, take your target surplus under organised and then work out the tech rate under financial with the same surplus. Compare the science investment under each one.

Yes, the organized benefit shows up in the bottom line, so it has to be worked in reverse through the financial multipliers to base commerce equivalent coins, and forward through science multipliers to equivalence in beakers. This establishes a coin to beaker ratio which was slightly more than one in this example.

If this is more or less correct, granted financial may be much stronger for the fully developed case, then I think Firaxis did a perfect job of implementing organized, for us warmongers that is.

BTW, beaurocracy (my spelling) = bureaucracy.

**couerdelion** · February 14, 2006, 08:12

How to compare traits

Looking at the figures I might easily think that you have some bias in favour of organised over financial because the multipliers and 2+ commerce tiles look very low to me. I guess that is just the style of game your playing but it still looks strange. Are there not even some coastal tiles yielding lots of commerce.

I can only quote from memory my most advanced game with Lizzie. With Fin/Phil traits, the cheap banks and universities are going to make the multipliers a lot higher than without them. Just taking the first few cities

City/No of tiles with 2+/Sc Mult/Golf Mult
London/8-10/185%/100%
York/6-8/85%/100%
Nottingham/6-7/60%-85%/75%-100%
Hastings/6-7/60%-85%/75%-100%
Canterbury/4-5/85%/75%-100%

Cities 6-12 were all coastal and running a healthy number of coastal tiles and most would have library, university and bank.

As this an island game I don’t think it distorts the numbers too much since many of the landlocked cities would have cottages. What is more this was just at the time of breaking into the Industrial Era (a point where the game started to become very unstable). Many of the second tier cities simply hadn’t finished some of the improvements.

I think the contrast here is simply a question of playing style and of fitting this to the traits of the leader in question. It’s certainly not to say that a financial civ doesn’t fight but it will rather fight with quality over quantity using the financial leverage to gain and maintain a technological advantage. Looking at your figures, I can only suppose that you not optimally using the financial trait of the Incas and so concluding that Huayna would have been better off as organised.

Another way of looking at it would be to say that ANY financial civilisation ought to aim to develop in such a way as to be better off than if it were organised. Likewise, an organised civ ought to develop in such a way that it would be better off than if it were financial. In general, this ought to be the case with all of the traits but I suspect that you will always find cases were you cannot play some civs in a way that makes them better off than all other civs with the game they are playing. Therein lies a challenge.

With regard to your supposition that the benefit depends on the slider position, and is therefore variable, is not the most scientific way of looking at what is happening. I find a better way is to think of things in the way described below. For ease of explaining the theoretical basis, I will ignore the rather annoying effects of rounding.

Beakers (b) and Gold (g) can be thought of as currency units. The exchange rate is affected by the different multipliers which might, for example mean that we can make 100b – 20g (at 100% science) or 60g (at 100% gold). We should ignore culture in this comparison simply because Culture (c) is actually another currency unit that our civilisation has. In the example stated, we have a civilisation exchange rate of 1g=1.25b which simply translates to say that our civilisation is far more efficient at producing beakers than it is at producing gold. If we mentally adopt this exchange rate then, at any point in time, we are indifferent to producing gold or beakers since every extra gold we generate from reducing the science slider is worth exactly the loss in beakers.

One way of looking at the exchange rate is the weighted average of the ratio of science multiplier to gold multipliers in all our cities with the base commerce of each city providing the weighting factor so that the relative multipliers are more important in the high commerce cities.

In practice we are not indifferent to where the slider is since there are “limits” either imposed by the game or where conditions change dramatically. Examples of these are the slider has to be between 0% and 100% and the effect of being in deficit. Here we can introduce constraints and the obvious one will be a target gold level. If we fixed this value then we have a relatively simple task of reversing one trait and adding another before calculating the slider value which gives us the same gold. The balance falling to science will therefore determine which trait is best for the game condition we are in.

This sort of comparison of beakers and gold can apply also to the currency units of culture, hammers, food and GP points although many of the "exchange rates" will not be easy to determine. Also the constraints start to play a much greater role once we are trying to bring hammers and food into the equation. But just because we cannot see them as easily as our beakers/gold/culture exchange rates, does not mean that they do not exist.

**Shaka II** · February 14, 2006, 12:43

Re: How to compare traits

Originally posted by couerdelion
Looking at the figures I might easily think that you have some bias in favour of organised over financial because the multipliers and 2+ commerce tiles look very low to me. I guess that is just the style of game your playing but it still looks strange. Are there not even some coastal tiles yielding lots of commerce.

Ah, you're playing an island game.

I think that makes a difference, but that's another comparison to run. The games I looked at were pangea. Note that while the average number of +2 commerce or more tiles was only 2.57, the top 7 cities had an average of 5.9 tiles generating extra coins. These coins are going through the high financial and science multipliers.

Also, you don't say how many cities you had. Did you have 30? You might have a different opinion of financial. So, if I got rid of those low productivity cities, many which were war ravaged, and keep the best 10, it would probably look much stronger for finacial. There is no bias intended, just that style of play may make one trait, in this case organized, more powerful. But what really strengthens organized are the courthouses that support the immense empire. Banks or universities only need to be built in the top ten cities or so, while courthouses need to be built in every city if you're playing for domination.

Originally posted by couerdelion
I can only quote from memory my most advanced game with Lizzie. With Fin/Phil traits, the cheap banks and universities are going to make the multipliers a lot higher than without them. Just taking the first few cities

City/No of tiles with 2+/Sc Mult/Golf Mult
London/8-10/185%/100%
York/6-8/85%/100%
Nottingham/6-7/60%-85%/75%-100%
Hastings/6-7/60%-85%/75%-100%
Canterbury/4-5/85%/75%-100%

Cities 6-12 were all coastal and running a healthy number of coastal tiles and most would have library, university and bank.

As this an island game I don’t think it distorts the numbers too much since many of the landlocked cities would have cottages. What is more this was just at the time of breaking into the Industrial Era (a point where the game started to become very unstable). Many of the second tier cities simply hadn’t finished some of the improvements.

Try pangea next time. Another point to playing pangea, is if you ignore your army in favor of building science and financial buildings, you won't last long before the AI pays you a surprise visit. So, one reason why the distribution seems low, is that a lot of cities have be pumping military units, to support the high science and financial cities. It's very tempting to keep building, but to win at domination, it's necessary to have about half of your civ just building units, barracks, granaries, forges, and military units, reserving universities and banks for the top 10 cities.

Originally posted by couerdelion
I think the contrast here is simply a question of playing style and of fitting this to the traits of the leader in question. It’s certainly not to say that a financial civ doesn’t fight but it will rather fight with quality over quantity using the financial leverage to gain and maintain a technological advantage. Looking at your figures, I can only suppose that you not optimally using the financial trait of the Incas and so concluding that Huayna would have been better off as organised.

I may not have optimized my use of the financial trait, but as I say, when you're trying to take over neighboring civs, you have to make tough choices. As I said, the top 7 cities had 6 tiles each on average due to financial, which is pretty good.

Originally posted by couerdelion

Another way of looking at it would be to say that ANY financial civilisation ought to aim to develop in such a way as to be better off than if it were organised. Likewise, an organised civ ought to develop in such a way that it would be better off than if it were financial. In general, this ought to be the case with all of the traits but I suspect that you will always find cases were you cannot play some civs in a way that makes them better off than all other civs with the game they are playing. Therein lies a challenge.

I agree. I was definitely making good use of the Incans aggressive trait, and tried to make good use of the financial trait, but production must not be overlooked in favor of cottages, and to support production, farms are necessary to offset the mines. So there is a balance. Overall though, the Japanse are a stronger civ for domination play than the Incan. They're both aggressive, but organized wins over financial in this type of game.

Originally posted by couerdelion

With regard to your supposition that the benefit depends on the slider position, and is therefore variable, is not the most scientific way of looking at what is happening. I find a better way is to think of things in the way described below. For ease of explaining the theoretical basis, I will ignore the rather annoying effects of rounding.

Beakers (b) and Gold (g) can be thought of as currency units. The exchange rate is affected by the different multipliers which might, for example mean that we can make 100b – 20g (at 100% science) or 60g (at 100% gold). We should ignore culture in this comparison simply because Culture (c) is actually another currency unit that our civilisation has. In the example stated, we have a civilisation exchange rate of 1g=1.25b which simply translates to say that our civilisation is far more efficient at producing beakers than it is at producing gold. If we mentally adopt this exchange rate then, at any point in time, we are indifferent to producing gold or beakers since every extra gold we generate from reducing the science slider is worth exactly the loss in beakers.

One way of looking at the exchange rate is the weighted average of the ratio of science multiplier to gold multipliers in all our cities with the base commerce of each city providing the weighting factor so that the relative multipliers are more important in the high commerce cities.

In practice we are not indifferent to where the slider is since there are “limits” either imposed by the game or where conditions change dramatically. Examples of these are the slider has to be between 0% and 100% and the effect of being in deficit. Here we can introduce constraints and the obvious one will be a target gold level. If we fixed this value then we have a relatively simple task of reversing one trait and adding another before calculating the slider value which gives us the same gold. The balance falling to science will therefore determine which trait is best for the game condition we are in.

This sort of comparison of beakers and gold can apply also to the currency units of culture, hammers, food and GP points although many of the "exchange rates" will not be easy to determine. Also the constraints start to play a much greater role once we are trying to bring hammers and food into the equation. But just because we cannot see them as easily as our beakers/gold/culture exchange rates, does not mean that they do not exist.

I agree for the most part, except that the distribution of extra base commerce generated by the financial trait is different than the overall base commerce, so it becomes weighted differently when it goes through the science or financial multipliers. There is a strong correlation between cities with high commerce and cities that have a large number of tiles generating extra commerce. But they're not equal. That's my point. So, when evaluating the benefit of the organized trait, you use the base commerce distribution, while the effect of incremental base commerce generated by financial trait, has a different distribution. A technicality, maybe not even that significant. If they were the same distributions, then I would agree with you. The coin to beaker conversion rate would be fixed, since distribution of extra base commerce would track with city total base commerce.

In my example, the benefit was 1.8% in coins of being organized versus financial, if running at 0% science, while the benefit of being if running at 100% science was 2.4% in beakers. If the two distributions were equal, these percentages would be the same.

How to maximize the organized trait or the financial trait is a related topic, but this thread was mainly in how to assess quantitively the benefits of each in terms of coins and beakers.

I wonder if there are certain strategies that allow markedly different science and financial multipliers. Suppose in a game you find that the organized trait allows a great reduction in civic and maintenance costs from building courthouses in every city. you could then divert more base commerce to science. You might also build more science buildings instead of financial buildings, since the slider rate is so high that financial multipiers are not multiplying anything, e.g., 100% science. Naturally, one can't run at 100% science for the whole game, but often it seems like about half of the game if you're selling techs and deficit spending. Also, consider that markets and grocers are not required for the expansionist, since health and happiness comes from acquiring new resources. So, banks look like the better return on investment with the 50% multiplier. But 50% of zero is still zero. Still, they have to be built in the core of your civ to handle the times when the slider is not at close to 100%. So, consideration of the slider rate and conversion rate of coins to beakers is necessary to understand what to build, and for what city. I think if you're Liz as in your game, it almost goes without saying that every city in the core (e.g., top 10 cities) is going to have a university and a bank. But that may not be true for the organized civ. Mao is a good example of the former case, since he's organized and philosophical, so one might try to run a high science multiplier and use courthouses everywhere to minimize costs, allowing a high science rate. So, the slider rate and the conversion rate of beakers to coins matter.

But I agree that we need to explore ways of maximizing the benefit of traits.

**Blake** · February 14, 2006, 12:58

Asoka (Org/Spi starts with Mysticism) is ideal for strategies where you ignore the gold multiplier, get strong shrine income and organized pretty much allows you to run 100% science. The only place you need gold multipliers is the shrine city.

It also works well with Organized conquerors who go on a holy city collection drive, focusing the gold multiplier in the holy cities.

This is a large part of the power of organized - neglecting the gold multiplier. It's an efficiency trait - allowing you to get by with less.

Announcement

Organized better than Financial?

Organized better than Financial?

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment