[SPOILERS] Novice and SevenSpirits play Suleiman of Korea

[SevenSpirits]

A little bit about philosophical.

Unlike with spiritual, we can't just run Caste System willy-nilly. It's too risky when your opponents are uncommunicative humans who can take advantage of your lack of Slavery. Sure, we'll probably want to run it in a golden age, and maybe late game when we can draft, but mostly we're going to have to rely on buildings with specialist slots, and on wonders. Right, wonders: when you think of philosophical you think of specialist economy, but wonders produce gpp too; in fact it's a big selling point for them. So I guess we'll make wonders a big priority, and keep an eye out for stone and marble.

[zakalwe]

Isn't another way to think of philosophical that you get 1-2 great people for free? After that, your GP birthrate should more or less match that of a non-philosophical civ.

For normal speed, the comparison looks like this:

Code:

Base GPPs   #GPs, Non-philosophical   #GPs, Philosopical
    50               0                         1
   100               1                         1
   150               1                         2
   200               1                         2
   250               1                         2
   300               2                         3
   350               2                         3
   400               2                         3
   450               2                         3
   500               2                         4
   550               2                         4
   600               3                         4
   650               3                         4
   700               3                         4
   750               3                         5
   800               3                         5
   850               3                         5
   900               3                         5
   950               3                         5
  1000               4                         5
  1050               4                         6

You get your first GP twice as fast as normal, then your second a little after you'd normally get your first. You get your third at the same time that you'd normally get your second, your 4th sooner than you'd normally get your third, and your 6th right after you'd normally get your 4th.

So why would you need to focus on wonders, per se? Isn't it more a question of what to do with that couple of extra GPs? (If the answer is golden ages, then I could see how it might snowball a little into additional GPs; otherwise not.)

Just a theoretical musing; my practical experience is 0, so feel free to poke holes in this.

[Rowain]

The difference when you get the next GP is quite big in turns.
Take a city running 2 scientist early.
A normal civ would get the first GS after 17 turns and the second after 50 turns. A PHI-civ gets the first after 9 turns and the 2nd after 25.
For the third it is already 50 turns difference.

This getting earlier is the power of PHI. Later in the game when things like National Epic and Pacifism are available its advantage is fading away.
As Civ is a snowballing game this early advantage can be huge.

A good read about this is in Sulla/Speaker PB2 game.

[SevenSpirits]

This is one of those things that's really hard to analyze.

The thing is, GPPs aren't automatic. You can focus on them at the expense of other things, and focus on other things at the expense of GPPs. And because Philo makes GPPs more efficient, it changes what the best play is.

But in addition to the fact that it's really hard to analyze in isolation, your math has to be off. By the time a normal player gets 7 GPs (running cost: 28x gpp [x=100 on normal]) a philo civ will have 10 GPs (running cost: 55x gpp / 2), which is a 3 GP difference, not 1-2. After 10, marginal cost for philo GPs starts increasing at the same rate (next one is 12x/2, next after that is 14x/2 while for a normal civ the next ones are 8x and 9x). In fact the GP counts keep diverging and should become infinitely different, theoretically.

BUT.

100% is not the baseline. Realistically everyone has access to national epic, pacifism, and golden ages. So these numbers are kind of misleading anyway.

But this is for sure: we have a big comparative advantage in gpp generation. We will, as in any civ game, be given the option to trade off x food/hammers/commerce for y gpp on numerous occasions, except in this game the ratio will be twice as good. So I'm sure we'll make that trade more.

[zakalwe]

In fact the GP counts keep diverging and should become infinitely different, theoretically.

Yeah, that's an interesting observation. In the long run, the cost of each GP grows ever more slowly (increasing not exponentially but by a constant step for each GP), so you actually do get the GPs almost twice as fast* in the end-game.

For example, in a game where you'd net 15 GPs as a non-philosophical civ, you'd net 20 GPs as a philosophical civ.*

So yeah... a bit more than 1-2 free GPs. Although it's arguably the early GPs that matter the most, due to the snowball.

I think my point kind of stands, though. The advantage essentially boils down to a couple of early GPs. So the value you get from philosophical depends on how wisely you spend those GPs. (Well, cheap universities are also nice.)


* Disregarding other GPP modifiers.

[novice]

At any rate I don't think any of us really value the Philosophical trait that highly (nor is it valued highly on RB in general), but it's what we were given in this game.

I suspect a cottage economy with 1-2 gp farms and some wonders where appropriate will be the way to go here.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, that's an interesting observation. In the long run, the cost of each GP grows ever more slowly (increasing not exponentially but by a constant step for each GP), so you actually do get the GPs almost twice as fast* in the end-game.

The cost of each GP goes grow faster. Not exponentially, but geometrically. After every 10 GP, the increment bumps by 100. So it goes 900, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600, ... 3000, 3300, 3600. This does put a damper on the value of Philosophical at the upper end. I agree with your pithy observation: Philo gives about two extra free-ish Great People but then matches a normal civ.

Philo is most valuable in single player on high difficulty, to get quick bulbs of Philosophy and Education, leverage that into Liberalism, and [strike]sucker the AIs[/strike] trade your way to a 2x to 5x multiplier on all that lightbulbing.

[novice]

Viable city sites discovered both in the north and the southwest.

[darrelljs]

(Well, cheap universities are also nice.)

Exactly. PHI is like IND, the passive trait ability is pretty useful but the free building is what you should focus on. It just so happens that in both cases the passive ability let's you get to the free building faster.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

GPP(n) = C*5*floor(n/10) + C*5*floor(n/10)^2 + ceil(n/10)*C*(n%10)

C is 67 for Quick.

Darrell