FIN : Most overrated trait

[Blaupanzer]

What does a GG farm look like, Thrak? Couer's ramblings sound almost surreal, but who would actually create a permanent war city? The unhappiness alone in the empire would eat the player alive.

[couerdelion]

Well in truth, +100% GPP does not yield +100% GP. Likewise, +100% GG points does not give you + 100% GG. The figure is nearer +40% GG from the extra GG points.

As for the concentration of production and XP bonuses in one city, as a strategy it is simple but it is not efficient unless you have a very small empire. Golden Ages and wonder rushing produce much more from your GE’s than a mere +3 hammers and +6 beakers per turn. To take a simple example: if you are running Theocracy and have a modest civilisation of 15 cities with a state religion. A rushed University of Sankore or Spiral Minaret will generate up to +60 beakers or gold (unadjusted) per turn. Similarly, I guess a GE will produce something like 1200 hammers towards a wonder like Pentagon – which is production that could be spent building military units. Settled in the HE city (with factory + power), it will take 130 turns of the settled GE’s production to get the same equivalent production. What’s more, the sooner that you have the Pentagon, the earlier your units will get the +2XP bonus.

[couerdelion]

RAMBLINGS!!!!

That reminds me of a story that happened several years ago……



[Thirty minutes later]

I actually thought that war exhaustion was only caused by combat outside your borders. The whole point about the Great Wall is that it gives the GG bonus for combat inside the borders.

[jbp26]

Originally posted by couerdelion
Well in truth, +100% GPP does not yield +100% GP. Likewise, +100% GG points does not give you + 100% GG. The figure is nearer +40% GG from the extra GG points.

i noticed this, but dont understand. can you please explain?

[Kuciwalker]

Okay, here's the math:

The first GP costs 100 GPP. The second costs 200 GPP. So, all together, the first two GP cost 300 GPP. And so on. Therefore the first N GP cost 100 * N * (N + 1) / 2. A good close approximation to this is that Cost(N GP) = 50 * N^2. A little algebra and you get a formula for how many GP you can get for a given total GPP: NumGP = sqrt(GPP / 50) (where sqrt is square root). Phi leaders will have +100% GPP, or twice as many, so substitute that in and you get NumGPforPhi = sqrt(2 * GPP / 50) = sqrt(2) * sqrt(GPP / 50) ~= 1.4 * sqrt(GPP / 50). Therefore a Phi leader will get about 1.4 times as many GP as a non-Phi leader for the same number of GPP.

(The Phi leader will also get them earlier, which is good too.)

edit: that logic was for Phi leaders and Great People, but it applies exactly the same to Imp leaders and Great Generals (or to the GG point bonus from the Great Wall).

[trev]

Just looked at the current game, in turn 356, year1936, emperor, standard pangaea map, normal speed I have 11 settled GG's and 1 used for Academy, so I have gained 12 GG's, 11 from war and 1 from Fascism. I have developed 4 very high production cities by this time in the game (only several % off domination), so 8 settled in capital and with theocracy and vassalage and police state, they have 29 experience points, and a unit is produced every turn. another city has 2 GG's settled, so a level 3 unit every 2nd turn, and a 3rd city gives a unit nearly every 2nd turn also at level 3 and has 1 GG settled at this time for extra experience. Having GG in other cities is unusual for me, but works in this game because of the high hammers, a surprise attack by Shaka meant I needed more cities on units, so that is why Police State and Vassalage used at present. Next GG is generated at 390 experience points of which I have 167 already.
There are currently 11 settled GP's in my capital of which 8 are prophets or engineers, so they cumulatively give a huge hammer and science/gold boost. One prophet would have been used for a holy city. There are 10 world wonders built in my capital also, plus a few in other cities that I have built and some others captured.

[Velociryx]

A brief aside to reply to LionHeart, and then I'll hush so you guys can talk about GP's and such...

Self handicapping is one way to look at it I suppose....I was approaching it more from the "Law of Diminishing Returns" side of the coin, however.

Here's what I mean:

So let's just go ahead and agree that a more aggressive style of play is more efficient in terms of its overall effect.

That said...once you are the big kahuna...once you HAVE the highest hammer counts....does it really matter if you force yourself to stay optimized?

Not so much.

Biggest is biggest no matter how you got there, and no one can touch you.

Likewise...once you have the biggest military (or at least, the biggest military of your near rivals), what does adding 5-10 additional units get you?

Aside from increased maintenance costs....nothing at all.

Thus, there are defined limits to the "maximize hammers at all costs" approach - at some point, it begins to work against itself (after you've built every improvement and have a military 9x the size of the rest of the world combined....can it not be said that the approach has rendered itself irrelevant?)...and even well before then, can it truly be said to be the optimal play?

So the rub is...if you can get to that point WITHOUT rabidly pursuing efficiency, and if it's more enjoyable for you to do so....does that mean you're playing a "worse" game?

No...less efficient...okay, I'll give you that...but it sounds to me like it's also...better....at least for you.

Ultimately, I'd say it comes down to being a matter of taste and personal preference, and that's what we want in the end, right? Who wants to play a game that's so badly unbalanced that there's only one "right" or "best" way?

-=Vel=-

EDIT: It's like in SMAC....sure, I can GET Industrial Automation in 2113 (and sometimes sooner)...but why would I want to?

[nbarclay]

One difference between the Financial trait and the Philosophical trait is that Financial scales much better with larger maps. The Financial trait scales with map size on an essentially linear basis: if you have twice as many cities of equal size and an equal stage of development, you get twice as much benefit. But the Philosophical trait does not scale anywhere near as well.

Assuming Kuciwalker's calculations are correct, a civ that is twice as big would only be able to produce 1.4 times as many great people. (All else being equal, the effects of doubling the number of cities would be very similar to the Philosophical trait's effect of doubling the number of GPPs per city.) Worse, in order for a civilization to use its doubled number of cities to generate 1.4 times as many great people, it would be necessary to have twice as many citizens working as specialists instead of working tiles, which itself could carry a significant price tag if the specialists aren't needed anyhow to restrict unwanted growth. In practice, an optimal strategy for a Philosophical civ with twice as many cities would generally lead to fewer than 1.4 times as many great people.

Since I normally play on huge maps, I normally view the value of the Philosophical trait as being relatively limited. On standard maps, or especially on maps that are smaller than standard, the trait would be significantly more useful.

[couerdelion]

Vel,

I would agree that efficiency can be a relative term and I can see what you’re saying. But we are talking about two situations while here I am more concerned with the “before” scenario of what the civ looks like when it is at its embryonic phase and where efficiency is far more crucial. When you finally arrive at a point where you are lord and master of all you survey then I think it is fair to say that you don’t take too much trouble in playing close to 100% efficiency – or what you believe to be 100%. For one thing it is far too boring to trawl through 30+ cities. At this stage you have a simple objective of finishing the game so everything is geared to support that.

In general, I rarely get to a situation where I have built everything and can do nothing more than build military units. If I am at that stage then the game is too easy and I need to move up a level. At here, efficiency becomes even more important than it was before because my relative position is now weaker than it was at an easier level.

The scenario that you raised is one which looks like it has been played on too easy a level.

Nbarclay,

PHI is one of those “early/mid game” traits. As a late game trait it’s value is a little limited because GP are so much more expensive. It’s power is in the speed at which the early GP are generated (say up to the first 5) so that you can produce an academy, shrine and lightbulb Philosophy, Paper and 70% of Education.

But I’d tend to agree that the diminishing returns from GP means that it does not scale up quite as much as Financial. In fact, the double cities < +40% GPP since there is usually only one strong GP city in any civ. Having two simply means that you have a lot of GPP doing nothing

Blake,

The one fly-in-the-ointment of “3x cities at 30% = 1x cities at 90%” is that not all cities are the same. When a bureaucratic capital can turn out the same production as two cities and the same science as five, a rapidly expanding civ can be counterproductive. That said, I agree with the general view expressed: greater production, access to more resources, fewer rivals.

[Velociryx]

Heya Lionheart!

Yep, I get what you are saying, but would contend that you've got the information at your fingertips for the whole game.

Demographics screen, right?

So you can get a reading every turn on how you rate with every other civ re: production, gnp, and food outputs.

This intel will tell you at a glance how much you need to worry 'bout effie.

Even in the early game, it's easy enough to get yourself in a situation (without rabidly purusing the optimal hammer counts approach) where you're just heads and shoulders above all your neighbors, in which case, optimization, while it might net you another 15% isn't really necessary, which frees you up to pursue other agendas.

I don't know 'bout the other folks here, but I take my "Civ Temperature" on a regular basis, and use it to tell me where I'm weak. The only thing it doesn't do is give you an accounting of specialists used, so there is some approximation needed, depending on how many specialists you're actually using, but no biggie. There are ways around that.

So at the end of the day, I guess I still have to come down on the side of saying that, more efficient or no, I don't believe that the hyper aggressive approach is so much better that it renders all the rest moot.

At least, that's not been my experience, and I sure hope we're not playing such a linear game!

-=Vel=-

[couerdelion]

Actually, my type of “aggressive” game is one that simply puts military expansion as a necessary pre-requisite of long-term survival. In other words, I will look to see when I can use it rather than it being the be-all and end-all. I can give an example of a current game playing with Shaka which has reached around 600 BC with the following situation.

I have access to two sources of copper but Iron is out of my reach at the moment. For the mid-game this is a crucial resource and I am not going to get it without fighting for it. Current resources linked include Gold(1), Corn(1), Copper(2), Rice(1) and two Gem sites in process of mining. Spices, Dyes, Bananas, more Corn, Clam and Stone also exist within current city fat crosses.

My immediate neighbours are

Kublai Khan to the south in what looks to be a small peninsula. He has access to horses and has also acquired a copper resource just on my southern border. But he has another source of metal somewhere.
Alex to the north east and most likely to acquire the iron I can see north of my capital (on the other side of the jungle). Probably will be receiving a visit soon
Monty to the east.
Other civs are Hannibal, Augustus and Huayna Capac so we’ve got a Pangaea map.
Barb cities exist to the north and west of the capital.

Having just acquired one barb city the remaining two are the more obvious priorities – barb cities are cheap to acquire so I want them before the AI gets them. Beyond that, there is a little space to expand to the south but will probably not have the time to get that one as well as the barb cities.

Surrounded by aggressive neighbours I have a few concerns. First that they may want to attack and second, that they will all be very chummy so will not like it if I attack. Notice also that all of the UU are Ancient or Classical era and I can only assume that these units are already prowling. But with my UU also around, the only one that might be problematic is Caesar. Conveniently, I can counter all the other UU.

Specific strategic concerns include
1) Kublai to the south will be a problem even if he is my best mate. My border city (ex-barb) is already up against is newest city border so will be under cultural attack. As a general rule, I find that wiping out Creative civs takes priority over others if I want my life to be easy. This will also conveniently remove one border and the risk of a two-front war.
2) By contrast, Alex may well be control of iron. Depending on what I find in Mongol lands, I might need to launch a pre-emptive strike north Iron becomes too important.

From all this, I expect to be in a position where I can dictate the terms of the rest of the game. In fact, it looks likely that domination will be the chosen victory condition which can be expected when you have an aggressive civ. If it sounds a bit linear well that’s AGG + Copper for you. A different map and a different civ would probably have allowed for more variation in the game.

[Blake]

Likewise...once you have the biggest military (or at least, the biggest military of your near rivals), what does adding 5-10 additional units get you?

Aside from increased maintenance costs....nothing at all.

Can't believe you said that.

A bigger military is always more useful.

In an engagement, whats better? Matching your enemy 1:1, or outnumbering them 2:1?

When fighting 1:1, half the units die, which leaves half surviving on each side, which can then fight again or whatever, until both sides are completely eliminated.
Your losses: 1
Their losses: 1

With a 2:1 battle, first half your units attack, killing half the enemy units, and leaving the other half badly wounded. Then the rest of your units mop op, taking limited losses.
Your Losses: ~0.6
Their Losses: 1

Bringing overwhelming firepower is always a good thing, the more theaters to which you can bring overwhelming firepower, the better. It's better to have overwhelming numbers, than more powerful troops.

Ie say your units win 30% of the time:

200 : 100 fight.
Round 1:
100 units attack, 70 die, 30 make kills.
Round 2:
70 units attack. 30 die, 40 make kills (against now wounded foes).
30 units attack, mopping up.

In this case 100 units die on both sides - the losses are equal. The older army was good enough despite being poorer in tech.

There are also OTHER benefits to having larger unit counts, it makes it more likely you'll have an optimal lineup to take out enemy forces of various makeups. What will be optimal varies, sometimes you need a lot of siege, other time specific counter units will be best, othertimes only general attacking units will be effective... having a large pool of units to select from gives more efficient combat.

For defense, in a relatively peaceful situation, having a "big enough" army can work, but when you're using your army as a lever, there's no such thing as too big...

Well that's not strictly true. You can't QUITE min/max the various vectors of the game, you can't maximize the production vector at the total exclusion of the commerce vector, but the commerce vector tends to be cheaply filled up to a healthy level from free/cheap sources like trade and GP's and no-brainer cottages (cities which have too much food or no other option).
Also naturally you need to focus a bit on the GOLD vector if you wish to have a large military vector, this is easy because the gold and military tech lines are one and the same, Banking is a very very cheap and short detour off the primary Iron Warfare military line. Since production builds banks, it's all good. Since gold multipliers increase both gold and science potential, they are very good. Science only lets you get more beakers.

The idea really is to have a BIG production vector relative to the commerce vector, not to try and shrink the commerce vector down to nothing, it's really about finding the optimal size, without sacrificing too much production (ie for a hammer-focused city with some commerce (not lots) a Bank isn't sacrificing too much production, but a University might be...)

[Kataphraktoi]

Thats not what he is saying at all.

but when you're using your army as a lever, there's no such thing as too big...

Well that's not strictly true.

Teh inconsistency

[Velociryx]

I think that our respective comments thus far have only illustrated the point that in Civ, there is indeed more than one way to skin the proverbial cat, and that's as it should be, IMO.

Again, to reiterate for the folks who might be reading and a bit overwhelmed by all the posts recently - it is 100% CLEAR and CERTAIN that the more aggressive style of play is the more efficient approach overall.

This finds its most common expression in that there is a near-universal consensus that as you move up the difficulty levels, you have to drop more and more of the game's fineries, and focus strictly on matters of efficiency and your immediate survival.

In my mind, that's all the proof I need, HOWEVER:

I'd be willing to bet my right arm that the vast majority of players out there enjoying Civ are NOT playing at Deity level. In fact, I'd be willing to wager that Monarch and below houses the greater bulk.

That being the case, rabid effie is not NEARLY the mandatory requirement that it is on deity level, which opens the door up for the multitude of other approaches that have been discussed and proven successful.

So...while every drip of what Blake and Lionheart are saying is absolutely correct, I felt it important to chime in for the other side of the equation that wasn't getting much press.

While they're absolutely right...it ain't the only way, and unless you're playing at Deity level, there's not one way you can definitively call the "best," which puts us back to talking about matters of efficiency and personal preference.

IMO, that's exactly as it should be.

Now...to the rest:

Blake, the points you made re: the army are certainly valid, but when I was making my remarks about finding other ways, I was specifically reinforcing nbarclay's comments about peaceful building...in your own comments you concede the point that for that style of play, it's entirely possible to have a "big enough" military, so it seems we're in agreement there, and regarding the optimal mix of counters and foils for a would-be invader, I'd argue that the increased carrying costs is a steep price indeed to pay for that level of over-insurance. If you feel you NEED it, the better play would simply be to prune whomever you're afraid of (which again, you don't need overwhelming advantages to do...at least not against the AI), so we're back to the law of diminishing returns. At some point, adding yet another unit doesn't net you anything worth writing home about.

Exactly when that happens is a function of who your neighbors are (you don't need 3x Gandhi's army cos how likely is he to attack!?...OTOH, if Monty's next door, you may as well drop into attack mode).

Excellent discussions thus far, btw!



-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Oh....one more thing I forgot:

It's entirely possible to have 1:1 as many troops as your opponent and still achieve overwhelming local superiority.

That is what matters in terms of winning wars.

-=Vel=-