[SIZE="5"]Analysis of Imperialistic[/SIZE]
I have a bad feeling about this one's usefulness. Any bets on how poorly it will fare in my evaluation? Place them now, I guess.
My guess:
IMP has two benefits. The major one is settler production. Settlers cost 65h and IMP covers up to a third of that, but usually less. I think in the average case - even considering adjusting your play to favor IMP strategies like whipping and building extra mines - you are putting 10f into the settler, and producing an odd number of hammers on a couple turns, and losing 1h to overflow on average, and therefore getting just 17fh (1/3 of 51) out of IMP. IMP also prevents you from 3-whipping settlers, which is a serious penalty for high-food cities and IMO merits a 1fh deduction. So 16fh per settler, 13 settlers, centered on t45, we'll say. 43fh, or 86b.
IMP's other benefit: GG points. There is only one thing in the game that this can be compared to, and that is the great wall. I believe the great wall is building around t60 if you have stone, so for 50h. I believe a great wall variant that gave no culture or gpp, but also affected combat outside your borders, would be worth 75h, and that making it be a national instead of world wonder would probably delay its construction until e.g. t80, but that this approximately cancels out the fact that IMP gets the benefits of it from t0. So my estimate of value: 75h on t60. That is about 10h which comes to 15b, giving us a total value for IMP of 101b.
It's worth noting that this is less than the value of ORG even if you never build a single lighthouse, courthouse, or factory. However on Noble difficulty, this would barely no longer be true, as ORG's maintenance reduction would be worth about 10% less. But yeah, if you are building buildings and stuff, ORG >> IMP.
I have a bad feeling about this one's usefulness. Any bets on how poorly it will fare in my evaluation? Place them now, I guess.
My guess:
IMP has two benefits. The major one is settler production. Settlers cost 65h and IMP covers up to a third of that, but usually less. I think in the average case - even considering adjusting your play to favor IMP strategies like whipping and building extra mines - you are putting 10f into the settler, and producing an odd number of hammers on a couple turns, and losing 1h to overflow on average, and therefore getting just 17fh (1/3 of 51) out of IMP. IMP also prevents you from 3-whipping settlers, which is a serious penalty for high-food cities and IMO merits a 1fh deduction. So 16fh per settler, 13 settlers, centered on t45, we'll say. 43fh, or 86b.
IMP's other benefit: GG points. There is only one thing in the game that this can be compared to, and that is the great wall. I believe the great wall is building around t60 if you have stone, so for 50h. I believe a great wall variant that gave no culture or gpp, but also affected combat outside your borders, would be worth 75h, and that making it be a national instead of world wonder would probably delay its construction until e.g. t80, but that this approximately cancels out the fact that IMP gets the benefits of it from t0. So my estimate of value: 75h on t60. That is about 10h which comes to 15b, giving us a total value for IMP of 101b.
It's worth noting that this is less than the value of ORG even if you never build a single lighthouse, courthouse, or factory. However on Noble difficulty, this would barely no longer be true, as ORG's maintenance reduction would be worth about 10% less. But yeah, if you are building buildings and stuff, ORG >> IMP.