Tweet
Disclaimer: Despite the teaser subject line, this post has little value in helping select which tile to work in a given city. That decision must be made in the context of the actual game (i.e. how will this city best support my civilization). I am posting this mostly because I had fun doing it and hopefully you at least have a little fun reading it.
The first step in valuing a given tile is to rank order the various resources a tile can provide. A few threads have debated this topic, with posters arguing in the context of their preferred strategy. I decided the simplest approach was to use the values Firaxis implicitly gave us via the specialists.
Each column gives you a set of linear equations. I won’t go into the details, but if we use the following valuations:
The normal and great specialists have similar value:
Culture seems weighted a bit high, perhaps production is a bit low. There are valuations that give closer totals, but they involve messy numbers.
The second step is to value commerce. It is a function of a) the sliders used to divide commerce into research, gold and culture, b) buildings in the city which amplify research, gold and culture, and c) civics which amplify research, gold and culture. We must also take into account any boost to food or production by buildings and civics. The attached spreadsheet has a little GUI with check boxes and drop down menus that let you specify your city, and then it calculates the relative value of food, production and commerce.
tile_valuation.zip
Some of what you find is intuitively obvious, e.g. commerce becomes more valuable as you construct buildings which enhance the things emphasized by your slider. Some are obviously wrong, e.g. to have production match food in a city with a granary, you need a forge and a powered factory. Finally, some aren’t clearly right or wrong, e.g. if you have two cathedrals, The Hermitage, and 100% culture, then commerce is equal to production.
Anyway, as I said above this post isn’t about making you better at micromanaging your cities, just another way to look at things
Darrell
The first step in valuing a given tile is to rank order the various resources a tile can provide. A few threads have debated this topic, with posters arguing in the context of their preferred strategy. I decided the simplest approach was to use the values Firaxis implicitly gave us via the specialists.
Each column gives you a set of linear equations. I won’t go into the details, but if we use the following valuations:
The normal and great specialists have similar value:
Culture seems weighted a bit high, perhaps production is a bit low. There are valuations that give closer totals, but they involve messy numbers.
The second step is to value commerce. It is a function of a) the sliders used to divide commerce into research, gold and culture, b) buildings in the city which amplify research, gold and culture, and c) civics which amplify research, gold and culture. We must also take into account any boost to food or production by buildings and civics. The attached spreadsheet has a little GUI with check boxes and drop down menus that let you specify your city, and then it calculates the relative value of food, production and commerce.
tile_valuation.zip
Some of what you find is intuitively obvious, e.g. commerce becomes more valuable as you construct buildings which enhance the things emphasized by your slider. Some are obviously wrong, e.g. to have production match food in a city with a granary, you need a forge and a powered factory. Finally, some aren’t clearly right or wrong, e.g. if you have two cathedrals, The Hermitage, and 100% culture, then commerce is equal to production.
Anyway, as I said above this post isn’t about making you better at micromanaging your cities, just another way to look at things
Darrell