Quantitative Analysis of Civ Traits

[punkbass2000]

"You can buy shields at a rate of 1 shield for 4 gold, or you can produce gold at a rate of 1 gold for 4 shields (after economics). Therefore, I am counting 1 gold as of equal worth to 1 shield. When added together I will call these gold/shields."

[Lord Merciless]

My ranking:
1. Industrious/Militaristic
3. Religious
4. Commercial
5. Scientific
6. Expansionist

The reason why I rank Militaristic so high is that I only play at Emperor+ levels where warmongering is the easy path to victory. Getting more elite units quickly and thus more GLs is a must. Also, Militaristic gives you 4 cheap buildings: Barracks, Harbors, Walls, and Airports.

I also think Commercial deserves a better look. For really big empires, Commercial can make a huge difference in your income and shield produced.

[Zurai]

Originally posted by punkbass2000
"You can buy shields at a rate of 1 shield for 4 gold, or you can produce gold at a rate of 1 gold for 4 shields (after economics). Therefore, I am counting 1 gold as of equal worth to 1 shield. When added together I will call these gold/shields."

This is a flawed analysis. Why? Ask anyone who plays on Emperor/Diety - Wealth is *not worth it*. 1 gold per 4 shields is NOT an appropriate value. Any high-level player will micromanage producing cheap military units to disband into another city instead of using Wealth, even though it's inefficient. Why? Because it's more efficient than Wealth.

Plug 1 shield = 4 gold into the formulas and you'll see a much different (and more accurate, IMO) picture.

[punkbass2000]

I may be wrong, but don't you only get 1/4 of a units shields when you disband it? Wouldn't it, therefore, be more efficient to use wealth, at least if your shield count is a multiple of four or if there aren't any units that divide into 4 well? (like a warrior only gives 2 shields, but a spearman gives 5, even though the spearman only costs twice as much to build.)

[Mazarin]

punkbass: no, wealth is not efficient at all: e.g. you need 400 shields to receive 100 gold by transforming producion to wealth...if you want to rush-buy a building , these 100 gold would only be worth 25 shields. So you loose 93,75% of your investment when producing wealth and rush-buying -compared to about 75% when disbanding units.

[punkbass2000]

Good point.

[sabrewolf]

(bump)

a really old thread, but it would be interesting if someone would find the time to do a new quantitative analysis of all traits. most have changed in one or the other way and there are 2 new traits.

[East Street Trader]

The size of the map, the configuration of the land masses, the level chosen to play, the neighbouring civs, events as the game unfolds and half a hundred other factors will affect the value of the various advantages.

On a huge map with just a couple of large landmasses that initial explorer has the chance to get your civ very firmly established. On a small, all island map or if he encounters an early barb he may be next door to useless.

Getting an advance when you enter the next age may turn a good game into a big win if you have achieved a tech lead, if you are lagging behind it will do very little for you indeed.

Cheaper barracks are nice - unless you are on a big continent and get Sun Tsu's.

The fundamental point has got to be that each trait offers opportunities to exploit the benefit conferred within the context of any particular game. Self evidently each is a good in itself. I doubt that any attempt to average out all the possible scenarios could hope to establish that any one comes out clearly ahead of any other.