Valuing long term investments

[LDiCesare]

The reason why gold is more valuable after Universities than before is the following. It is linked to this:

a temporary blip in the longer-term trend towards greater productivity, technological advances and wealth

:
When you have universities, the higher the science slider, the most total output (gold + beakers) you get. So having gold immediately when you have universities is interesting mostly if you keep it to run a deficit and have a higher science slider.
However, like culture, gold has a value which never changes through the game, whereas beakers and hammers (and food) provide different benefits based on your infrastructure and techs.

About useless technologies, there is at least one imo: Divine Right. If you didn't pick it first, it's a real gambit for it to provide anything, and you're certainly better off capturing the cities than building the wonders yourself.
As for Scientific method, it's often the case for me that I don't have the resources in terms of workers abd production to make use of the techs it unlocks, so it's often a good idea to delay it a bit. It's a typical case where settling a GP will be more interesting than rushing it because I need some long term infrastructure boost at this point.

[fed1943]

In a lot of games, Divine Right is of little use.

But if you have Budhism or Hinduism well spread (domestic and

neighbours) with Holy Shrine, then Spiral Minaret becomes very

interesting.

Best regards,

[couerdelion]

Here’s my more considered take on the “decreasing gold” question but to consider this I will have to make the assumption that it is generally better to have every tech earlier. But since the value unlocked from different techs vary, it may be that better to accept a delay to one in order to get to a second faster.

The situation with universities, or libraries academies, banks etc are specific to a particular stage in the game and these change the relative price of gold and beakers. Those two factors operate within their own spheres: gold goes to treasury or pays for civ expenses (plus other things) while beakers go towards tech investing. At any stage in the game, 100 beakers is worth 100 beakers and 100 gold is worth 100 gold. They will be worth that next turn, in 20 turns or in 500 turns. I can not find any way of seeing how those numbers can somehow reduce - which is what negative discount rates would imply.

Looking at a simple example, it can easily be argued that the value of 10 beakers invested to start researching a tech costs 100 beakers is worth exactly the same as the 10 beakers invested to finish that tech. The game does not distinguish between any of these beakers unless you choose argue that the first 99 beakers are absolutely worthless and the final one has all the value. Such mathematics is the domain of microscopic analysis of the game that can hardly be applied to the general framework.

Now let’s suppose we were investing 5 beakers, instead of 10. We get the tech in 20 turns so lose 10 turns of its value. If this value is significant, we have lost some value and so we can clearly state that 10 turns of 10 beakers is worth more than 20 turns of 5 beakers. In some form or other, there is an expression which places lower values on beakers and gold acquired later rather than earlier.

Now to look at the problem with changing multipliers. First of all, I believe there are only limited situations in the game where this creates much additional value. The mechanism for varying gold and beakers is the slider and using the Finance Manager Screen we can see the aggregate beaker/gold exchange rate by comparing the values it produces at 0% and 100% respectively. Whenever a library, observatory, academy, university or laboratory is built, the figures will show a higher value of beakers produced at 100% relative to the amount of gold at 0%. Likewise, the opposite affect will occur when markets, grocers and banks are built.

Included within this exchange rate figure is also a lot of “noise” generated from other factors which may increase the commerce in a city that has relatively more science or gold multipliers than the average.

The method by which we can gain a little bonus from these changing values is as follows: store up extra gold in times just before the science multipliers increase and use this to fund a higher science rate when they arrive. In simple terms we are taking advantage of a sort of arbitrage because we know that beakers will be cheaper in the future than they are now.

A simple example would be a civ generating 20 commerce and 4 expenses with no funds in the treasury (running zero surplus gold at 80%). All the commerce will be subject to a new library in one turn.

So at 100% science we will produce 20 beakers (25 after library) and run a 4g deficit
At 80% science we will break-even on gold and produce 16 beakers (20 after library)
At 0% science we will generate a surplus of 16gpt.

Now if we have 100 beakers to research for the next tech it will take us 6 turns at 80% science (16+20x5=116 beakers). But if we run one year before the library at 0% science we can store up 16gold which will allow us to run 100% science for the next 4 turns. The tech will take just 5 turns to research and we will have 4 more beakers towards all future techs.

Suppose, though that we have 30 beakers left to research. The first approach will give us this tech in 2 turns while the second will give us it in 3 turns. Over the five turns we’ll get those extra 4 beakers on the second approach but we will perhaps have lost out on the one turn in which we did not have the technology.

The benefit from using this store gold for use at a higher investment rate is VERY situational.

The second thing about the gold:beaker exchange rate is that this rarely makes large leaps. I think the largest you will ever see is the Academy built in Bureaucratic capital. This could increase the gold:beaker conversion rate as much as 33% but it is a one-off situation – and quite rare also. More than likely, the exchange rate will make little step jumps (1%-2%) and the margins you gain from these are likely to be smaller than those in the above example – which was quite marginal anyway.

Let’s just say that, in my opinion, the gains you can make for taking advantage of this arbitrage can sometimes be useful but will not be a winning strategy, merely a way of getting your civilisation onto a more optimal footing. There will often be far more important strategic decisions to worry about. What’s more, it does not make gold more valuable later than earlier. If you can generate a trade mission for 2000g, it will still be there to invest in technology later at a better rate. You might trouble to look for a better mission but this makes sense anyway and not as a delaying tactic. At worst, I would concede that there may be a situation where 2000g now is worth no more than 2000g in x turns.


On the question of “valueless” techs. Divine Right has other values I can think of besides the Wonders and Religion. It can be sold or traded to other civs for techs or money. It also gives you a discount on Nationalism which opens up a number of civic option and wonder techs. Also, the Spiral Minaret can be a decent wonder if you are running a strong domestic religion. In a large empire this can generate more gold for you than a shrine.

[LDiCesare]

I generally agree with your views on gold/beakers, but want to point out the other use of commerce: Culture.
Culture is very important in one case: when you aim for a cultural victory. I usually plan this at turn 0, or when I realise I am more or less isolated.
Culture commerce is easily multiplied by 3 or 4: One civic give +100%, many buildings provide +50% (7 religious buildings, broadcast towers, Broadway, Hollywood, Rock'n'Roll, Ermitage). You can get +400% in all cities, and up to +650% in a single city with these buildings, which makes a very significant difference and cannot be ignored. It's rarely useful if you are not going for a cultural victory, though.
As for Divine Right, its uses (trading and wonders) are really limited to you getting it before anyone else. In a similar way, liberalism gets a clear value boost if you're the first to research it. Both techs require some planning in order to get them first or early.