Hi all,

Organized says "-50% civic upkeep"

Does that mean 50% less maintenance cost in your cities (like a courthouse) or does it mean that the upkeep for your civics (e.g., vassalage, theocracy, etc.) cost 50% less?

If it's less upkeep for your civics, is it worth it, how much money does it save you?

Thanks!

its 50% cheaper corthouses and 50% cheaper civics. In higer levels you could save around 100 for expensive civics which is peanuts compared to what you get from financial...

Yeah, organised is a weak trait. The "poor man's financial"

Organized is ideal for building a big empire early in the game by settling and/or by conquest. Non-organized civs are halted pretty quickly after only a few cities. Early warmongers are often forced to stop just so they don't bankrupt themselves.

Later on, though, the trait isn't all that useful. Financial is great but it's pretty worthless at the start of the game. So I'd say organized is the "early man's financial"

It's only "early man's financial" if you war early. To get the most use out of Organized, you have to go for early wars and take advantage of the cheap courthouses at a time when they will have the most dramatic effect (more than 6 cities, pre-calendar, pre-markets). If you don't take several cities over early, then financial is better.

Organized with the previous patch was a little better, because without it, on Emperor your first city's maintenance cost was -2 gold right from the start. With just one city, you could only run 100% science if you were Organized.

I'm guessing Organized just sucks at levels below Monarch.

thks guys, but i'm still confused as to whether it is option a or b. could you clarify:

option a: reduces upkeep cost of civics (e.g., vassalage) by 50%
option b: reduces city maintenance cost by 50%

it reduces the cost of all civics by 50% . So if your paying 200 normally for your civics, if you'r organized you pay 100. Also corthouses cost half shield than normal.

Actually financial is extraordinary at the beggining as well. Building cottages for exmapl on rivers get you to 3 instantly. Financial is as great at the beggining as it is at the end of the game. That extra benefit offsets the normal cost of corthouses, and renders organized as bad as expansive trait in my opinion.

organized has the advantage that you don't need to cottage-spam but can use mostly mines and farms.

organized has the advantage that you don't need to cottage-spam but can use mostly mines and farms.

Exactly. I can get that GP city up and running pretty quickly with organized.

As to early warmongering, yeah, I'm guilty as charged. I find the axemen rush to be too powerful of an oppurtunity to pass up.

Option A. I was also confused by this initially, but after reading several extensive posts here, realized that in fact civic upkeep is proportional to the number of cities you have as well as the total size (population) of your empire, and that it does constitute a significant portion of total upkeep per turn.

Ah, ok, so it's not that it reduces city maintenance cost, but the civic upkeep is proportional to the # and size of your cities...So that's why I thought it was city maintenance based on what people have said about organized?

But what if you run civics with low upkeep? Is organized not worth it then?

Yes, organized definitely becomes less attractive if you're running civics with low/no upkeep.

But when running organized, the more expensive civics become relatively more attractive to use... so it's well worth your while to consider whether or not you might want to change away from the civics you usually run.

excellent, i finally understand :) thanks everyone!

Lots of people only play Financial Civs cause you can be pretty sloppy with your strategy, still have lots of cash and win.

OTH, if you want a little bit more of a challenge and actually learn the nuances of the game its definitely worth the time to figure out how to play with different leader attributes.

Right now I am having a kick a$$ game playing as Roosevelt (Org/Ind). Missed the Oracle, but still managed to get CoL first and with my missionaries going nuts everywhere (Caesar and Tokogawa had no religion) I soon had cash to burn. Picked up Taoism when I sixed Cyrus and had more cash. Should win the space race comfortably.

Just shows you can win with more than one strategy

i definitely agree and i don't lean on financial civs. i'm currently working out a really cool strat with alex (prince level) that is paying some huge dividends. i'm going to probably write it up in the strat articles section once i finish a game or two to get all the subtleties of it.