tax/science

[defrancoj]

any idea why a city that has both a marketplace and a library, size 8, one elvis, would produce 12 gold but only 10 beakers, when the tax sliders are set 3tax 3sci 4lux ?

[Bloody Monk]

Re: tax/science

Originally posted by defrancoj
any idea why a city that has both a marketplace and a library, size 8, one elvis, would produce 12 gold but only 10 beakers, when the tax sliders are set 3tax 3sci 4lux ?

defrancoj,

I don't know for sure but it looks like the result follows from the order that the AI assigns the trade arrows.

You didn't say how many trade arrows the city had but I'll guess the number is 25.

Forget the MP and Lib and look at base numbers, 8 gold and 7 beakers. Again, I'm guessing, but you can check by alternately selling off the white goods. So, if 30% of 'X' = 8... 'X' = 24 or 25 trade arrows.

Then, assuming the order of assignment is L, T, S (S must be last), you get 10L + 8T + the remainder, or 7S.

What do you think??

Monk

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

In 2 words: rounding error.

In more than 2 words: If the number of trade arrows in a city is other than a multiple of 10, the 3:3:4 tax/sci/lux settings could lead to, say, 4 arrows going to tax, 3 to science, and 5 to luxuries if your base trade is 12. Adding the library and marketplace multipliers gets you a total of 6 tax and 4 luxuries. Beakers get shortchanged twice in this scenario - once because the two arrows beyond 10 can't be divided 3 ways, and again because multiplying 3 by 1.5 gets you 4, not 4.5 or 5.

[defrancoj]

oooh I see. I've often wondered, though aparently not enough to actually check it out, if they cheated you out of trade arrows with the rounding. But if I understand you correctly, each and every base trade arrow is assigned to one of the three possibilities, with the result that equal slider settings might not give way to equal allocations if dividing teh base trade in such manner is not possible.

[rjmatsleepers]

You can see the same effect on your first city, before libraries, etc. As you move the slider, only integer allocations are possible. So if you start with only a small number of arrows, initial changes in the slider have no effect. As Monk and styom have pointed out one of the categories is allocated by subtraction to ensure a correct total.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Scouse Gits]

The boys beat me to it - with, naturally, the correct answer.

Stu