How much should you buy rush?

[Yosho]

ROI is useful if you have very long-term objectives.

For example, if it's 200 AD, you're on your own continent, and have already decided you're going to go for a culture victory 300 turns from now, with intermediate goals that mostly involve economic growth, trying to stay ahead of the AI's in technological development, and using the above two to grab most of the wonders, the best way to do that is probably to consider the ROI of your economic buildings; is it better to build a granery or a forge; is it better to build a bank, a library, or a courthouse in city X, and so on.

ROI is almost completly irrelevent if your primary objective at that moment in time is "survive the current German attack while losing as few cities as possible". But in general, I do think ROI is a useful tool.

[Velociryx]

See, I would take the opposite view.

I would say that unless you plan on playing past the arbitrary cutoff date, at least some minimal cost/benefit (ROI) analysis would be more useful as you approach the natural end of the game, as opposed to early on.

Most early build choices are born either of a) necessity (we desperately need (fill in the blanks) so it gets built first), or b) lack of choice (I have three techs, and I can either build a granary or another warrior I don't need, so there's not much opportunity for analysis early on. And even later, as the game progresses, immediate needs usually trump investment style plotting and scheming.

The biggest draw I can see for a stable ROI type game would be one of isolation (and late game, of course). Isolation removes troops (garrisons and scouts aside) from the equation, and the lack of contact with other civs reduces your choices to pure internals. Once the garrisons are built, ROI (however you define it) doesn't have much acting on it, cept for what you introduce yourself with your build program, and as such, its use as a planning tool increases many times over. Start adding some of those factors back in tho, and...I dunno...maybe a formula for fluid dynamics might be a better analogy.....

-=Vel=-

[Hermann the Lombard]

Fluid dynamics? How about Chaos Theory?

[Velociryx]

-=Vel=-

[uberfish]

I only really try and figure out ROI as related to rushbuying when in a close space race, since it's easier to look at the gold output of a city then and decide whether that Bank is going to pay for itself or not by the time I've finished research.

[Yosho]

[SIZE=1]
Most early build choices are born either of a) necessity (we desperately need (fill in the blanks) so it gets built first), or b) lack of choice (I have three techs, and I can either build a granary or another warrior I don't need, so there's not much opportunity for analysis early on. And even later, as the game progresses, immediate needs usually trump investment style plotting and scheming.

The biggest draw I can see for a stable ROI type game would be one of isolation (and late game, of course). Isolation removes troops (garrisons and scouts aside) from the equation, and the lack of contact with other civs reduces your choices to pure internals. Once the garrisons are built, ROI (however you define it) doesn't have much acting on it, cept for what you introduce yourself with your build program, and as such, its use as a planning tool increases many times over. Start adding some of those factors back in tho, and...I dunno...maybe a formula for fluid dynamics might be a better analogy.....

-=Vel=-

The thing is, ROI stratagy planning works very well even if you do need millitary forces, or if it's the beginning of the game and you only have a few choices, ect.

You really can't compare millitary builds with economic builds, but within economic builds or within millitary builds, it's worthwhile.

For example, say you're trying to build up a reasonable millitary while keeping a strong economy, and want to spend about 50% of your hammers on millitary forces. ROI can't tell you how much to spend on millitary, but once you have decided that, it can help you decide how and where

Let's say your capital is making 50 hammers a turn, and 3 outlying cities are making a total of 50 hammers a turn. Is there a better rate of return for building a bank in your capital and millitary units more slowly in 3 smaller new cities, or to build 1 millitary unit in your capital and 3 courthouses in your outlying cities? Either way, you're spending 50 hammers a turn on millitary and 50 on economy, so which way gives you a better return on your investments?

[fed1943]

You really can't compare millitary builds with economic builds, but within economic builds or within millitary builds, it's worthwhile

You are absolutly right,Yohso.
(BTW why my quotes behave different from everybody ones?)
Best regards,

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by fed1943
You really can't compare millitary builds with economic builds, but within economic builds or within millitary builds, it's worthwhile

I believe you can although I think the necessary calculations are very complicated.

At a very basic level, economic builds are quite a simple equation which, if we factor in future growth in city commerce, we can calculated the per turn gain of the build and compare it to the cost.

For military builds there are two parts to the value gained
1) The reduction in the probability of loss
2) The increase in the probability of generating new commerce/production.

Those probabilities are going to be the ones that are most difficult to calculate since a lot of the information you have on the strength of your enemies will be incomplete. Even if you knew this, knowing how and where an enemy will strike (the AI is usually quite stupid) is not an easy task.

Difficult yes, but not impossible