Suttree Wrote:I suspect that the mean interest rate is the same or similar when comparing quick and normal speed.
@SevenSpirits - You're right, this is completely wrong. Tile yields are unchanged so interest rate scales with costs. Speculating=bad.
@Krill - Valuing military is a problem because, in theory, it's a waste. You build a better economy than your opponent, then pump out military units 'til he dies. In practice, it's part of a game that has nothing to do with the economy. Since it's my thread, here are my thoughts
Defensive military is easy, it just gets factored at face value in to the cost of the investment the military is defending. Seven's numbers are useful because they allow you to take build cost (in hammers) and maintenance (in gold per turn) and lump them together in a sensible way. You can answer questions like, "How much will it cost me to settle this frontline city?" Also, the numbers attune you to the most efficient way to build your military. For example, "Why is a single Heroic Epic city better than many hybrid cities?", "Why is Slavery efficient?"
But offensive military is entirely game dependent. It doesn't seem that way at first : "Look at my opponent! Noob doesn't have an army, I'll build an axe and take his entire empire! Woo 1000% return on investment!" Unless combat is skewed towards the attacker, however, this should never work. Your opponent just builds his own axe, and everyone's worse off. This is the problem of guns and butter - at the margin it is always better to build military than not, but over the long term everybody loses. So military is a a complete waste of resources and my opponents should never build a single military unit.
And yet expert players build military. Why?
In diplo games, military is an extension of the diplomatic game. Two players might develop their economy equally, but the player who has more influence wins. The threat of force is a useful psychological tool for garnering influence and takes its value from the judgement of the expert diplomat.
In no diplo games, warfare is a game of tactics. The expert player might not have the best economy, but he can gather information more efficiently and predict the behaviour of his opponents more accurately. The expert player builds military because he knows his opponent, in practice, will not respond. Or he uses tactics to spend less on military than his opponents and achieve the same result.
And that's why experts build more military than noobs like myself!
I fully admit that my goal in this game is to build an economy and then do something with it. PB13 on the other hand.....