The Science/Wealth/Culture Slider

[Sirian]

But most of my cities, if I am running full out science, will generate next to nothing in gold, therefore making bank, et al. not worth the expense. Why build a bank that will give me 1 additional gold per turn, at most?

If you're running full-out science in the industrial age, under normal game conditions, then you either don't have many cities (and should get more) or you founded one or more religions and spread them around to pull in cash.

Some rounds of all cash can be used for intensive upgrading. They can be used for rushbuying key items at new colonies. You need X banks just to be able to build wall street. Most importantly, if you begin a push for conquest (or domination) you WILL find more need for money, including paying for upkeep, upgrades, rushed airports or transports etc, and more.


At this point, I'd rate the odds on allowing different tax rates at individual cities to be zero. It's an interesting discussion, though, from the theoretical perspective.


- Sirian

[Sirian]

Even with 70% research building markets and banks seem pointless...

If you actually go and use those extra troops you build, you acquire more cities, more maintenance bills, and then you're not running at 70% any more. You're down to 50%, or 30%, or zero, or even in the red, and scrambling for every bank you can build. You are then slowing down in research pace, but you can go only so far before you have to upgrade your troops. You've got veteran troops lying around and a need for cash to make continued use of them. Your whole civ has been devoted to warmongering, yet your investment is decaying in power with each passing turn, bringing the targets closer to a new generation of military units. Yet you can't get any surplus cash from pausing your meager research: you have to get it in larger chunks from taking cities, which then only add to your bills.

The game's a bit better balanced than you guys are crediting in the current round of the debate.


- Sirian

[Blake]

Indeed. Markets and banks are enablers - they enable more conquest, or more spending in science. Generally, they enable you to raise the science %age higher, so if your science %age is low, building markets and banks is the thing to do. In particular, below 40% markets are basically better value than libraries.

Another thing that may have been mentioned, but I didn't see it, is that building banks everywhere (with spare production cycles) can be useful even when you are generally running high science %age, for the periods when you go 100% gold to raise income. Basically they give you more flexibility. If you have universally low gold multipliers you can't afford to lower the slider to earn some quick cash.

[Zeroth Amendment]

So maybe this is a crazy idea, and it's certainly a huge change from the way things currently work, but what if instead of giving you a bonus in gold/research equal to a percentage of your gold/research, libraries and banks and the like gave you a bonus in gold/research equal to a percentage of your commerce?

[Blake]

Umm errr for one it would reduce strategic choice, as the return on investment would be much more simplistic. Given that gold and science are interchangable via slider, all you need do is always build the building with the best multiplier/cost ratio. Implemented globally it would be bad, but isn't inherintly bad, like say wall street could generate 1g for every 2 commerce in the city. Wallstreet would then give approximately the same benefit regardless of slider allocation and holy shrines, which one might say is realistic and it might be good for the sake of variety too.

[Bezhukov]

I like to build (or, more accurately, whip ) markets and grocers for the health/happiness boost, and has been noted, banks for wall street. Even in games where I get lazy on the conquests and could run 100/0/0 ratios, I tend to stick to at worst 80/10/10 to get some benefit from the buildings I've already invested in. You can always find something to do with that cash, and can trade away happy resources for health with the 10% culture happiness cushion.