(August 11th, 2013, 05:22)Old Harry Wrote: By the way, have you read Seven's tech and trait-picking thoughts from PBEM 43 (everything up to post 32) and PBEM 47 (post 13)?
They are for quick-speed torroidal maps, so not directly helpful here, but it's a really interesting way to think about value. (I'm not going to pretend I understood it all so you'll have to read it yourself...)
Thanks for pointing me to these, great read so far. I just got to this post, which is a really neat analysis of the Org trait that makes me think about it in a completely new way.
(September 16th, 2012, 17:54)SevenSpirits Wrote: [SIZE="5"]Analysis of Organized and Financial[/SIZE]
Qgqqqqq Wrote:Ive heard people are often quite dismissive of ORG.
Care to explain?
It's quite difficult to compare the long-term benefits of traits, but I will try. Additionally, ORG's value is highly map-dependent. People attribute this to different difficulties, but actually difficulty is not the main factor. There are three parts to ORG's value and I will go over all of them.
I use some math from here: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5589
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1) -50% civic upkeep. I would estimate that civic upkeep comprises about 1/3 of your costs. Right now I looked up what my civic costs would have been without ORG, at 10t intervals, in pbem39. Civic costs went: 0, 0, 1, 1, 3, 7, 19, 39, 77, 101 (last two are estimated since at this point ORG saves fairly close to half, so I just doubled the in-game values and added 3).
So at turn 89 ORG was saving 52g/t even ignoring inflation which was 12% at that point. Now to properly value that 53g you got on t89 you have to discount it for time... my best calculation is divide by two for every 20t elapsed on quick speed. so 52 * 0.5^4.5 comes to 2.3g. (I.e. I estimate that the savings from ORG on t89 are about equal to starting with an extra 2.3 beakers). But that's just t89. Sum up all turns from say, 0 to 110, and you will get something close to 100g (probably a little more). This is NOT the same as 1gpt!! Remember we've already completely discounted for time, so it's equivalent to starting with 90-120g extra of techs researched on t0, or an extra 3-4b/t on your starting tile. I'm going to call it 110g.
Looking in that same game at my citizen and city counts, and assuming that as a FIN leader I'd earn about 1c per citizen minus 2.5 per city (i.e. assuming each city works 2.5 tiles that don't give the FIN bonus, probably resources) then the benefits from FIN would be approximately double the civic upkeep reduction from ORG.
One other thing to note about the ORG upkeep reduction: it helps extra at low population due to all the rounding. The most absurd benefit is on monarch or lower (which slightly discounts civic upkeep) when each civic is costing 3 upkeep base. In this particular case, a non-ORG player will end up paying 3 * .9 (prince) = 2g per civic. An ORG player will pay 3 * 0.5 (ORG) = 1, 1 * 0.9 (prince) = 0g per civic!
2) Discounted courthouses. This is the heavily map-dependent part. On this map, courthouses will be a very desirable build, and therefore the discount will be quite strong. As a rough guess, let's say you would like to build 8 courthouses at about t65, with an average of 15% additional bonus hammers towards the courthouses. Then a non-ORG courthouse costs 70 raw hammers, and an ORG courthouse costs 37. ORG saves you 33 * 8 = 264 hammers, which we must now discount for time. That comes to about 28h at the start or 46b (might as well convert everything to beakers-at-the-start so it's easier to compare traits, even though if they were actually all in the form of beakers-at-the-start you would see some serious diminishing returns).
3) Discounted lighthouses. I built 11 lighthouses in pbem39 and I'd say 10 were worth building even without ORG. Probably they were worth being one of the first few builds, but the first few cities didn't have any, so t65 again seems like a fair average build date if we say there is no further discount on them. So 10 * 20h = 200h, discounted from t65 = 21 start-hammers, or 35 start-beakers.
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ORG also discounts factories, but since many games seem to end before then, I am deciding not to factor that in. ORG's total estimated start-beakers on a map like this comes to about 190. Meanwhile FIN's estimate is 220.
On the pbem39 map, ORG came with an additional 1f per turn, free. 1fpt is worth about 30f to start, which is worth about 70b. So according to my math, this put ORG at 260b to FIN's 220b. This seems to jive with what I thought at the time I picked it.
Here, instead, ORG gets two free turns compared to FIN. How much is a turn worth? Well, our output at the start here is basically 5 foodhammers and 11 beakers. That converts to 21b, and 2t is therefore 42b, putting ORG at 232 to FIN's 220. Now keep in mind that these are really rough estimates... I think this means ORG is slightly better in this setup, but I've injected in incredible amount of noise with all my converting and estimating. It's also worth noting that I expect this map to have fewer resources than 39, which I believe will boost FIN a bit compared to ORG (since it becomes more about cottages).
Does 2t being 42b sit right? Compare the value of settling on a plains hill, +1hpt, which according to my math is worth 50b. Is it worth 2t to move onto a plains hill if everything else stays constant, but not 3t (-63b)? That seems plausible to me.
TLDR: ORG's civic reduction is about half as good as FIN. The other parts of ORG could vary from not much effect on a no-wrap land map, to almost completely making up the remainder on a toroid with water. I estimate FIN to be worth 220 starting-beakers and ORG 190 starting-beakers on a pbem39-like map.