education

[Dale H]

Ok, I need an education. While playing & waiting for a saved game to load I read one of the tips the program provides that says to be careful not to build a library in a city that is not generating a lot of culture. Now, this is news to me & just where in the game documentation would I read about this? I have looked & I can't find anything. I am aware from the documentation how different buildings can benefit but I find little info about what conditions make a building worthless or harmful to build. Thanks,

Dale H

[Hayden]

Your best bet is to read the civ bible or "Civilopaedia". It can be accessed from the menu screen at the start of the game or in the top right corner of the in game screen.

For example in there you will find that a library increases your science output by 25%. If a city is say producing 3 beakers per turn. You add 25% onto that and you might get an extra beaker if your lucky (im not sure how the rounding works). You might say therefore that a beaker is a beaker and therefore worth building for. But when you consider the oppurtunity cost of that library, it may have been a few military units that you dont have, a settler, or a few workers.

Basically, at all times, before you build something, make sure you know why you building it, what the benefit will be and if there is little or no benefit then perhaps you are better off building something else.

[SandMonkey]

Re: education

Originally posted by Dale H
While playing & waiting for a saved game to load I read one of the tips the program provides that says to be careful not to build a library in a city that is not generating a lot of culture.

I haven't seen this tip personally, but are you sure it didn't say be careful not to build a library in a city that's not producing a lot of commerce? In that case, a library is more or less wasted if you're only producing 2 or 3 commerce.

In the case of culture, well I'd say a library is a good choice for a young city. In fact, after obelisks are obsoleted and before I get theatres the first thing I build in a city for culture is a library.

[bobshiznit]

It does say "Be careful not to build a library in a city that is not generating a lot of Commerce"

You need at least 4 commerce or a ton of food for a library to be useful.

[Nacht]

How does a ton of food make a library usefull

[Unimatrix11]

Specialists !

Btw: In my last game the libraries where my only culture generators for a LONG time - didnt build temples nor obelisks (i never build those)... hmmm maybe some monastaries, but that was later, too, since i didnt found any religion... it was kind of a warmonger game (chariot-rush)

[Willem]

Originally posted by Nacht
How does a ton of food make a library usefull

So the city can support a couple of Scientists.

[rjmatsleepers]

If you run a small empire you need a library in order to build a university in order to build Oxford in your science city. You have to have those six universities even if they are giving you very few beakers directly. And even a weak commerce city will eventually produce beakers from its trade routes.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Paddy]

Library = Culture =

[Dale H]

Re: Re: education

You are correct & it did say "commerce" & not "culture". Sorry. Very helpful advice, all. Thanks.

Dale H

Originally posted by SandMonkey



I haven't seen this tip personally, but are you sure it didn't say be careful not to build a library in a city that's not producing a lot of commerce? In that case, a library is more or less wasted if you're only producing 2 or 3 commerce.

In the case of culture, well I'd say a library is a good choice for a young city. In fact, after obelisks are obsoleted and before I get theatres the first thing I build in a city for culture is a library.

[Unimatrix11]

Do trade routes generate gold or commerce ? If it's gold, do banks etc. apply ?

[Quillan]

Trade routes generate commerce. Shrines generate gold. The sliders separate the raw commerce into science, culture, and money. Libraries and such modify the science output. Cathedrals modify culture. Markets et al. modify gold. Rarely will an improvement modify commerce directly (the harbor does).

[Hermann the Lombard]

I'm looking for clarification on how these bonuses stack (and knowing--I think--that for their respective buildings what applies to beakers for applies to gold)

Let's assume I have a city producing 8 beakers.

I build a library and get +25% = +2 = 10 beakers.

I build a university and get +50%...now is that 50% of 8 (totalling 14 beakers) or 50% of 10 beakers (totalling 15 beakers)?

Now I build an observatory and get +25%. Am I back to +2 beakers or is this +25% of 15 beakers = +7.5 and--in this specific example--would that half beaker be wasted?

Now, because I'm a PITA I build a monastery giving +10%. Is this +10% of 8 (presumably rounding down to +0)?

[Willem]

Although the percentages are calculated on the base amount, they stack together. So at 8 beakers with Library, University and Observatory it would be 8 + (25% + 50% + 25% = 100%) for a total of 16 beakers.

[SandMonkey]

Originally posted by Hermann the Lombard
I'm looking for clarification on how these bonuses stack (and knowing--I think--that for their respective buildings what applies to beakers for applies to gold)

Let's assume I have a city producing 8 beakers.

I build a library and get +25% = +2 = 10 beakers.

I build a university and get +50%...now is that 50% of 8 (totalling 14 beakers) or 50% of 10 beakers (totalling 15 beakers)?

Now I build an observatory and get +25%. Am I back to +2 beakers or is this +25% of 15 beakers = +7.5 and--in this specific example--would that half beaker be wasted?

Now, because I'm a PITA I build a monastery giving +10%. Is this +10% of 8 (presumably rounding down to +0)?

[General interface comment] If you mouse over the top left corner of the city screen, you'll see a breakdown of how the computer calculates your beakers, gold and culture. [/General interface comment]

If you take your base beaker production (total commerce x science rate) and add any beakers from specialists, you get the "true" base beaker rate. This is the number that the multiplier is applied to.

For instance, if you produce 10 commerce, and you're running at 60% science, and no scientists, you would clearly be producing 6 beakers/turn. If you add a library and university (+25% each), your new beaker total would be:

6 beakers x (1 + 50%) = 9 beakers

It can get kind of confusing when the game lists separate multipliers (i.e. +150% from buildings AND +50% from civics, etc), but in reality you just add up the percentages and use the total as the multiplier. So in the example I just gave the multiplier would be 200%, not [150% x (1+50%)] = 225%.

So just to sum it up, the multiplier is applied to the total of your beakers from commerce plus any beakers from scientists/specialists.

Sorry if that made it more confusing!