computation problems

[omnibus]

I'm not able to figure out how exactly are the economy numbers computed. What is the formula between:

1) production/food/gold in city pop-up window (is it "base" production?)
2) max city production/food/gold on a city sheet
3) total civ production/food/gold on a civ tab

Impact of city improvements is also massy; does they multiply base production or current total production. Earlier in the forum I was told that they multiply base production, but I'm not able to calculate the results.

I know I could live without knowing that, but I'm just curious.

[J Bytheway]

To the best of my knowledge it works like this (though I've never checked):
(Taking gold as an example - just substitute whatever else is appropriate)
BaseGold = Sum of all gold from worked city squares
ImprovementMultiplier = Sum of all improvement multipliers and 1 (for the base)
WonderMultipler = Sum of all Wonder multipliers and 1
CityGold = BaseGold * ImprovementMultiplier * WonderMultiplier * GovernmentMultiplier * (1 - CrimeRate)
CivGold = Sum of CityGold for all cities

Don't forget about the govt. and the crime, or it won't add up.
Possibly the govt. bonus is added only on the civ screen and not on the max tab.
It may be that the Wonder and Improvement multipliers are added, not multiplied.

Not many people know that the bonuses to production and gold can be negative too (A feature which I use in my very-nearly-finished scenario). I have one improvement with -100% production bonus. If the bonuses were each cumulatively multiplied, that would kill all production, but it doesn't so they must be added up (Note that I have checked that the production does go down somewhat, so it's not just ignoring the modifier). I can't be quite so sure about the wonders - but it should be easy to check in the same way.

Bonuses to food work differently again. Normally 175 food is required for each new pop (but the city can only grow once per turn, so it may fall way behind). I *think* that bonuses to food from wonders (e.g. Stonehenge) actually increase the harvest, but growth bonuses from improvements (e.g. Granary) don't change the harvest (so a starving city will still starve) - they merely change the food required for growth. e.g. a city with a granary will grow every 87.5 food in storage. If these bonuses are additive, you could get wierd results - like a city with two 50% bonus improvements requires 0 food for each new pop, and so grows every single turn in which it has a surplus. I'm not sure what happens if the city is losing food but the population should still be growing by the reading on the storage counter. All this is tested even less.

And there's celebration, which supposedly doubles growth, but I've no idea how. It can't very well change the food required for growth, because that would mean when the city left celebration it would have a huge defecit to make up. Probably it just doubles the surplus food each turn.

Beef vats are wierder yet - the documentation says that they always provide 5 surplus food, but I've carefully watched food storage counters and it appears that this doesn't always happen. I think it happens in celebration or something.

[omnibus]

Thanks a lot, J Bytheway, for really comprehensive answer. Yet, it confirmed my feeling that hardly someone exactly knows how the things work. You made a lot of observation and still many aspects are unclear.

Another point, improvements work different way: some multiply city output (bank), some add points per pop (television). Is the money obtained via television multiplied by other gold improvements (i.e. is it part of "base" gold). The same with trade: are money from trade multipied?

To figure out all this, you would have to sit for hours with Excel and calculate and calculate. Is there a place these formulas are written down and you just come and pick them up (e.g. somewhere in the program)?

[J Bytheway]

Whoops - forgot about those, and we both forgot specialists. Egad, this is complicated!

OK, so specialists give you an amount each determined by the best available population from pop.txt given your cities population and improvements (In the std. rules the only changes that occur are entertainers getting better with theatre, merchants appearing with bank (or is it bazaar?) and labourers appearing with factory, but you can have many more population types than that if you want - I haven't yet determined what determines where the population as defined in pop.txt appears on the labour screen - it may be it's name or the type of bonus given, but what if it gives more than one bonus? You can set workers (the guys in the fields) to give you 100 happiness, science, production and gold each if you really want - but I wouldn't advise it ).

I guess that the income from specialists is then adjusted by wonder effects (e.g. Nanopedia) and then added (along with TV effects and trade) to the base gold. Of course, the trade might be added after other multipliers. Who knows how the trade income is calculated as seen on the trade screen? It could be displayed as the amount after improvement bonuses and/or wonder bonuses, and it might be affected by city population, not to mention the effects of the number of trade goods already in the city, and the value of the good defined in goods.txt.

I think this would be days with a spreadsheet, not hours! Celestial Dawn included a spreadsheet in his mod which calculated some of this data, so he must have been fairly confident in his formulae. I don't think you can just look them up - it means understanding machine code probably...

John

[ZoboZeWarrior]

In fact it's very simple.

Each city produce a certain amount of gold/production/food.

Some building increase this quantity.

Those amounts are modified by your civ setting (total hours work a day, gold distribution and food distribution)

Then criminality take is part.

Science and public work take their parts

Now you have the real production of each cities.

The total of production/gold civilization is the total of the values of each cities.
Minus production and gold taken by war units.
Plus (or Minus) bonus given by your gouvernement.

For more info look at :

Game Rules : Happiness with Work Gold and Food
Game rules : Criminality calculation.

[jpww]

JBYTHEWAY wrote:
BaseGold = Sum of all gold from worked city squares

I take it you've taken into account the resources gathered from the tile your city is built on?!

"A city always starts with two workers. One works the main city tile and is not visible. The other worker is visible in your Work View" - Activision

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by jpww
I take it you've taken into account the resources gathered from the tile your city is built on?!

Nope, forgot about him too . For some reason Activision decided to not show you how much he harvests, which is very annoying. It's very difficult in fact to work out what he's giving you if you've built many improvements .

John