Lightbulbing vs Settling

[Indalecio]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Er, buildings don't have maintenance costs in Civ 4. Only cities do.

Thats based on population, not buildings? Something else?

[Lorizael]

City maintenance is based on the number of cities in your empire and a city's distance from your capital. If there are other factors, I'm not aware of them. Then again, I just recently started playing again.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Blake
Yup the cost.

A university costs 200 and gives +25% science and +3 culture.

3 monasteries cost 180 and give +30% science and +6 culture :P. They also have incremental build benefit (you get the first 10% after only investing 60h)

Usually the correct number of Universities to build is enough to get Oxfords university, because Oxfords is great, in an appropriate city it'll provide more benefit than the universities required to unlock it .

You might build more universities out of boredom, but they aren't great builds.

To be fair, Monasteries go obsolete.

[couerdelion]

It’s all a question of context. Pyramids dramatically alter the whole question of settling vs lightbulbing. Far better to consider the default position as NOT having the Pyramids and comparing these so a settled GS gives you 1 hammers + 6 beakers until the later stages of the game.

Likewise I wonder about Blake with his disrespect for further Education – actually Universities are good because they allow you to build Oxford University. Apart from that they ought to be a more marginal build until later in the game where Electricity means that hills and rivers become awash with commerce. Even here, exceptions exist with coastal cities running three trade routes. A simple rule, I’ll want to build a university in a city that has something in the region of 30 base science so if the slider is at 50%, you’ll need nearly 60 base commerce in a city.

Cybershy is also getting some poor lightbulbs if he needs two of them to make up 1700 beakers. Sure, those settled GS might, by the late stages of the game, be generating 30% of the total science output. The problem is that you take such a long time to get there.

Blake’s production backlog is not really problematic either and seems a good enough reason to hurry along to Biology, Assembly Line and State Property. Failing that, use the whip.

Originally posted by darrelljs

Anyway, I don't think anyone is questioning the fact that given enough turns, settling generates more beakers than bulbing (although the number of turns is certainly a matter for debate).
Darrell

I’m happy to question it. The statement would be correct if you were comparing a single “shot” of beakers versus a continuous stream of beakers + hammer but this is an oversimplification. That shot gets you to point A more quickly (Philosophy) which increases the number of GP you will get. So the lighbulbs to Paper, Education and Printing Press would appear in the same time that a non-Pacifist civ would only have generated 2 more scientist. That civ might have around 35 beakers (18 + academy+ library + 2 monasteriers) from its settled GS while I can build Oxford.

But perhaps more importantly, I’m in the Renaissance Period quickly and am on the verge of a financial and production surge with Economics (GM Trade Mission + trade boost), Replaceable Parts (and those riverside farms start getting replaced by watermills). Perhaps a short detour to Rifling, to give my cities something better to build or the Democracy branch for Taj/Statue of Lib/West Point + Representation or the Military branch for Iron Works and Dry Docks may then be in order but ultimately, the next real target it going to be State Property for the extra food and to bring workshops into serious play.

A few other techs like Electricity and Biology complete the general mix and my civ output has been completely transformed. Even if they have a similar sized empire, my nearest rivals are far behind in output of every type. Industrialisation makes this even more dramatic and I have a high production city now with Iron Works and another with H Epic and West Point. Game over apart from maybe deciding how to win.

Touching on the subject of tech trading, I find this is a useful tactic for a single period of the game – the one where you change from being in catch-up mode to the one where you start to put distance between yourself and your nearest rival. If you are reaching renaissance at the same time, then this is more problematic. But if you get there ahead, it should be relatively straightforward to stay there.

And all this time, the settled GS are dragging a reluctant civ behind you into the same period.

Just take a look at your graphs and note when you reach key Renaissance/Industrial techs like Rep Parts, State Property, Biology, Astronomy, Electricity, Assembly Line. If that doesn’t give you good reason to get there ASAP then I don’t know what will.

[darrelljs]

Originally posted by couerdelion I’m happy to question it. The statement would be correct if you were comparing a single “shot” of beakers versus a continuous stream of beakers + hammer but this is an oversimplification.

Yeah, I know. That's why the next sentence I typed after your snip was:

"What's difficult to quantify is whether the short term advantages you gain from bulbing can be parlayed into other advantages which will more than overcome the numerical settling edge."

Darrell

[nbarclay]

If a civ can devote twice as much of its commerce to science as to wealth (for example, with the help of shrine income), then other things being equal, a university contributes the same amount to a civ's total of science plus wealth that a bank does. Universities are also an extra source of culture in border cities that are fighting with rival cities for tiles or that are trying to flip rival cities.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Blake
Yup the cost.

A university costs 200 and gives +25% science and +3 culture.

3 monasteries cost 180 and give +30% science and +6 culture :P. They also have incremental build benefit (you get the first 10% after only investing 60h)

Usually the correct number of Universities to build is enough to get Oxfords university, because Oxfords is great, in an appropriate city it'll provide more benefit than the universities required to unlock it .

You might build more universities out of boredom, but they aren't great builds.

Well, and of course universities gie you the science bonus for the rest of the game, and monasteries don't. And it's rare that I get more then one or two religions in my cities early enough for building monistaries for the science bonus are worthwhile before they go obsolete.

Don't get me wrong, monistaries are worthwhile builds and one of the reasons early religion is worthwhile, but that's not really a fair comparison.

In a city that produces 20 base science a turn, a university gives you 5 science a turn, so in 40 turns the investment pays off at a rate of 1 science per 1 hammer. Is that a good investment? Well, it depends on what else you can do instead, but it's not bad when compared with banks and markets and such, most of the time. You've got to think about which is more useful at the time in what city.

[Kuciwalker]

1 hammer is worth a lot more than 1 science.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
1 hammer is worth a lot more than 1 science.

Yeah, I agree; that wasn't to say that the investment pays off in 40 turns, just that that's a good way of comparing, say, universities to banks to missionaries to other ways of making money.

You can't directly compare the value of a hammer to value of commerce, so the best you can do is know when you want to take your hammers and use them to increase your long-term money potential, and how to get the best return of your investment.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
1 hammer is worth a lot more than 1 science.

More yes but not hugely more. 2 hammers = 3 science/gold works reasonably well for me.

Turning to the question of value it is presumably a question of context and perhaps I should first point out that banks are more valuable than universities. If you are running at 70% science then you need to expand.

That also works for me.

Now to the 200 hammers vs 5 science per turn. My crude valuation of this equation would convert the 5 beakers into a fixed monetary amount. If it were Epic speed then

5bpt = 333 beakers = 222 hammers

But,

At Epic speed, the university costs 300 hammers so the trade is not particularly good.

beaker to hammer conversion is not quite as easy as gold to hammers because there is no reasonable trade between these two. Usually, I would try to convert beakers to gold and then to hammers but the first conversion is heavily dependent on the mix of gold/beaker modifiers in an empire - this can change dramatically at different stages of the game

[couerdelion]

You know the strange thing is that I am settling GP in my current game though I should perhaps explain my apparent inconsistency.

1) I’ve settled on a Plains Stone hill so have built Stonehenge, Great Wall, Pyramids. To date, I have generated 3 Prophets but have generally been running with Representation
2) Starting with Mysticism, I managed to snag both Hinduism and Judaism (and later Christianity). The first two are in my capital and Hinduism rapidly became the dominant religion in the region.

It seemed to me almost a no-brainer to build the Shrine first and then to settle the next two prophets.

My arguments for lightbulbing are more focussed on a basic GS generating strategy.

p.s. You gotta love Spiritual + Religious tech tree + Pyramids. Poor old Louis is being brutally outcultured by Madrid and he’s about to learn that a large ancient navy is not going to be much use to him after he launched a totally unprovoked strike (fortunately leaving most of his navy in port) while my own army and navy were starting to return home from the Indian frontier. Did someone mention Police State + Theocracy?

Even the loan Trireme raider left seafood resources alone while it went chasing after galleys. But even if he had gone for the jugular and sent the whole navy and army at unprotected Madrid, I can still turn out 8 hammers per turn purely from the contribution of the prophets.

Even so, I've finding that my rate of progress through the techs, while steady, is not as fast as I would like and that Huayna Capac seems to be outteching me at the moment in the early medieaval period. That's usually the time that I start pulling ahead.