I'm making some mathematical calculations on the worth of various things, such as missionary spamming for optimal profit, but in doing so I found that such considerations often require some kind of "exchange ratio" for :hammers: to :gold:.

So, in your opinion, what's a fair ratio? Would you rather have a bunch of :gold: or one :hammers:? How does the terrain in your empire factor in? Does the ratio scale over the duration of the game?

The above poll options assume your empire has roughly equal terrain when it comes to :hammers: and :commerce: production (since tiles can't produce gold directly, the terrain comparison is made in terms of commerce, which you can turn into gold when necessary). The poll is a multiple-choice poll, so you can vote for all options you consider true (Obviously some options are contradictory, and shouldn't be chosen together ;)).

The listed eras denote:

Early game is approximately up until the late classical (Obviously, hammers are very, very valuable here).
Mid-game is from the late classical/early medieval up until the end of the renaissance (when e.g. the Free Speech/Universal Suffrage civics become available)
Late-game is the era when all civics are available and you are industrializing.


Initially I thought a 3 gold to 1 hammer ratio was fair (since I often prefer hammers), but if you think it is higher or lower than this, choose the appropriate option(s) and comment here. I also assumed that hammers are always more valuable than gold in the 1 to 1 sense, except in special circumstances (e.g. when running a very mine heavy empire with poor income). Hopefully at least one of the poll options reflects a fair statement.

If you think the ratios in the poll options are poorly chosen, feel free to post a reply with your preferred ratios! E.g. 1:hammers: to 2:gold:, 1-to-1.5 etc.
All input/criticism of these ideas is welcome, since this will allow me to make a better analysis of various game situations involving production :)

That is a very interesting question and one I have thought about for a long time. You'll appreciate that there is no simple answer to the simple question; it really does depend on the game situation and what you want to do now and in the near future. But if I had to give a single number it would be 1 :hammers: is worth 2 :gold: Sometimes it is less and only worth about 1.5 gold and sometimes more about 2.5 gold and always stays within the range 1 gold and 3 gold.

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Let me explain: My reasoning all revolves around the exchange rates between hammers and gold and in reverse between gold and hammers. There are 2 ways to turn gold into hammers.

a) Obviously there is US available later in the game with Democracy or most of the game with Pyramids and that has a basic exchange rate of 3 gold gives 1 hammer to complete a build that has already been started. The Kremilin reduces that to 2 gold per hammer. Rush buying something that has not had any hammers invested costs 50% more. Putting hammers towards Wonders has a base rate of 6 gold per hammer and 4 gold per hammer with The Kremlin and is horribly expensive.

b) Another way to turn gold into hammers is to upgrade units. The basic rate is again 3 gold per hammer plus an additional 20 gold per unit. That often averages out at about 4 gold per hammer for a typical upgrade and I use that as my rule of thumb upgrade cost.

There are several ways to generate gold from hammers.

c) Wealth can be built after Currency and that gives 1 gold per hammer. The hammers are the cities final output after production modifiers such as forge and factory. Hammers from chopping or whipping cannot be turned to gold.

d) Building part of a wonder that gets completed in another city gives 1 gold per hammer invested next turn. That appears to be the same rate as building Wealth. However, this can be a more efficient way to generate gold than building wealth, as Wonders often have a 100% production bonus from stone/marble effectively doubling the worth of basic hammers. The Industrious bonus has a similar effect. Another interesting feature of using wonders to generate gold is that hammers from whipping (usually overflow from a whipped unit or building) and hammers from chopping can be applied to the wonder and eventually they get turned into gold when it is built elsewhere. It is even possible to have several copies of the same wonder in different cities all partially built and each gives gold from the "lost" hammers, although this is close to an exploit in my opinion (that worked in Warlords but has not been tested by me in BtS). With Industious and the 100% production bonus it is possible to generate 2.5 times more gold from dummy building a wonder than simply using the same hammers to build Wealth. In that sense 1 hammer can be worth 2.5 gold instead of 1 hammer is worth 1 gold.

e) Overflow hammers from building units (and buildings I guess) that exceed the cost of what was being built are turned into gold. In Warlords these excess hammers could be used to generate significant amounts of gold. See vale's article Hammer Overflow (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218272) for details. I don't know if it still works like that in BtS but again it seems a little borderline to some people.

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There are ways to micromanage your cities to exchange gold and hammers

f) If you have a citizen that can be used to work a plains hill he'll give 4 basic hammers and if alternatively he could be used as a merchant he'll give a basic 3 gold plus 3 GPPs. Various civics affect the efficiency of this method of implicitly exchanging hammers and gold. Beakers from Representation, extra GPPs from Pacifism and Philosophical trait, and the modifiers from various buildings (forges etc... and markets etc...) affect the relative efficiencies. and complicate the calculations too much to make a simple conversion of hammers to gold or gold to hammers. I'll leave this part of the argument for others to think through.

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Given those ways to generate gold from hammers and then the ways to use gold to buy hammers it is clear that the value of hammers range between a baseline 1 gold when you have more hammers than can be used effectively to a basic 3 gold when hammers are seriously needed to be bought in a city or about 4 gold when used to upgrade a cherished unit.

It is unlikely that you want to use hammers to generate gold in one city while using gold to buy hammers elsewhere, the exception might be dummy building a wonder to pay for troop upgrades. It is obviously inefficient to build Wealth in one city (1 hammer = 1 gold) and then spend gold to buy hammers in another city (3 gold = 1 hammer) but that economic inefficiency can often be justified by a military emergency or the need to expand cultural borders quickly or some other urgent reason to buy hammers. It is not something a player does often or in many places but can still be worthwhile. In that sense gold is a store of hammers that can generated at will.

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So those are my thoughts on the worth of hammers. I did not chose any of the options in your poll as frankly I didn't understand your underlying reasoning. Perhaps you could explain how a hammer can be worth 5 gold or even 3 gold. What would be the circumstances when you would come to that opinion? This is an interesting discussion I would like to explore further.

I'd say that this very situation-dependent and therefore nearly impossible to answer.
Are you trying to put together an army asap, to utilize a tech lead (or while being invaded)?
Are you trying to win a rush to early religion?
Do you intend to conquer or sit back peacefully?
Whatever ratio you shall accept, it shall inevitably be wrong 3/4 of time, because just too many things factor in.

As a side-note, missionary spamming has other uses than just making cash. How much gold is worth a war initiated between hostile AI-s or the one that was never declared on you?

I often end up with very production-oriented empires with no where near enough gold especially in the early game, so roughly equal the whole way through IMO.

My experience has always been that hammers are cheaper and easier to get than gold. Look at it this way, when you *really* need hammers you can chop for them, that gets you through a few early wonders or soldiers. If you use them properly you are given a larger window of opportunity to build the next round, and you get to that window much much faster with a large amount of gold. I routinely have like 3/4 of my cities working as cottage cities, and the other two providing defense for the whole country. It works well. Imho they are equal or perhaps, the hammer is less valuable.

That is a very interesting question and one I have thought about for a long time. You'll appreciate that there is no simple answer to the simple question
Yes, indeed. I've never really sat down before to think about it numerically, since it is very hard to put it into such terms!

Thanks for your very thoughful and interesting reply, much good information there! :goodjob:

I did not chose any of the options in your poll as frankly I didn't understand your underlying reasoning. Perhaps you could explain how a hammer can be worth 5 gold or even 3 gold. What would be the circumstances when you would come to that opinion?
Well, the 1:hammers:=3:gold: option isn't so strange I believe. Universal Suffrage and Unit Upgrades, which you mention, both lie around that rate. I do regret not putting in a 1 hammer-to-2 gold ratio, though. It would have added much more accuracy at the cost of only 3 added poll options.

The 1 hammer-to-5 gold option is likely a bit extreme (and would perhaps have been better put to use as the 1-to-2 ratio), and personally I only think this is arguable A) In the early game, where you are building workers+settlers+monuments, and B) when you are preparing for war without universal suffrage.

Of course, as soon as maintenance becomes an issue, gold becomes more valuable so this ratio is probably too situational to be an issue.

If you think 2:gold:-to-1:hammers. or 1.5-to-1 are more reasonable then post in your reply and I'll factor it in when collating information from the thread later :)

This is an interesting discussion I would like to explore further.
As a starting point for discussion, maybe one could list the :hammers: to :gold: ratio in different situations?
E.g. (feel free to criticize the guesses. They might be consistently too high in favour of hammers)

Early expansion, pre-currency. 1:hammers:-to-3.5:gold: Importance of early workers+settlers. Especially true with an imperialistic or expansive Civ.
Classical age wars. 1-to-2.5 Build speed is paramount. You need to quickly build stacks and reinforce them. Ratio drops to 1-to-1.5 or 1-to-2 after a few conquests.
Post-courthouses, building of e.g. libraries and markets and National Epic. 1-to-2. Hammers are important since you generally wont have US, and hammers at this point mean increased science and gold yields faster.
Classical age farm heavy specialist driven empire. 1-to-1.5. In this case you generally have adequate production, but the prevalence of farms and lack of hamlets/villages lead to maintenance issues.
etc..



I'd say that this very situation-dependent and therefore nearly impossible to answer.
Well, obviously the ratio varies, but I'm also interested in knowing what people think in different situations. The poll should only be seen as part of the question.

Then again, obviously you wouldn't pay 20:gold: for 1:hammers: or 10:hammers: for 1:gold:, so there is a region in which the exchange rate lies, and with discussion maybe it can be narrowed down ;)

Whatever ratio you shall accept, it shall inevitably be wrong 3/4 of time, because just too many things factor in.
Disagree. Sounds like just giving up.

As a side-note, missionary spamming has other uses than just making cash. How much gold is worth a war initiated between hostile AI-s or the one that was never declared on you?
Yes, this is true, but that doesn't make a calculation of a missionaries net monetary yield useless, does it? In order to calculate something, you must choose a question with a quantifiable answer.

2.5:commerce: = 1:hammers:

But this only works for base terrain with no modifiers. In the renaissance with banks (+100%:gold:) and no factories, rush-buying or upgrading units becomes feasible.

I'd just like to say that it also depends on how much food a tile has as well, and sometimes you get both hammers and gold (gold/silver/gems).

In my games I try to work tiles that "benifit" my cities the most. Sometimes I'll cottage and work plains or hill cottages at a higher priority just because it adds that extra hammer, especially if I have a food resource in the BFC.. I usually cottage over bananas and sugar.

I have to say though, I almost never put workshops or mills in my commerce cities or cottages in my production cities.. and if you look at it like that, the exchange rate has to be something like 2 gold : 1 hammer in the late game depending on how the city is specialized.

If I had a tile that gave me 1 food, 9 commerce as opposed to 1 food, 3 hammers, I'd take that. Or a copper on hills/plains, 6 hammers would be 18 commerce.
I find that if I get alphabet early, my production cities can make more research than my commerce cities, so earlier hammers are more plentiful. Also, consider that people build wonders for gold, so they like a 1 to 1 conversion.

The best non-resource commerce tile is 2 commerce (coast or river cottage).

c) Wealth can be built after Currency and that gives 1 gold per hammer. The hammers are the cities final output after production modifiers such as forge and factory. Hammers from chopping or whipping cannot be turned to gold.

<snip> (I'm a moron)

In BtS, when building :culture:/:gold:/:science:, raw production is filtered through appropriate +:hammers:% multipliers (Forge, Factory, Power, IW) before being added to the city's output [post Library/Bank/Cathedral/etc.].

This is very much like the Vanilla formula, except that production goes through +:hammers:% modifiers instead of +:culture:/:gold:/:science:% multipliers.

I'm not sure how that affects your calculations, but in the late game, this gives me the impression 1:hammers: == 2:gold: & 3:gold: == 1:hammers:.

As of BtS, this is no longer true.
What exactly are you saying is no longer true? His statement that hammers from chopping or whipping cannot be turned to gold?

This is very much like the Vanilla formula, except that production goes through hammer modifiers instead of science etc multipliers.
No, it always did that. The only change has been 50% to 100% from Vanilla to Warlords.

I'd say it's 2:1, based on the converged late game conversion rates of Kremlin rush buying (2g -> 1h) and Factory powered build wealth (1h -> 2g)

As of BtS, this is no longer true.
What exactly are you saying is no longer true? His statement that hammers from chopping or whipping cannot be turned to gold?

I misread his statement and actually confirmed exactly what he was saying. :blush:

This is very much like the Vanilla formula, except that production goes through hammer modifiers instead of science etc multipliers.
No, it always did that. The only change has been 50% to 100% from Vanilla to Warlords.

Well, sort of, IIRC. In Vanilla, the :hammers: were converted 2:1 then run through Libraries, Markets, etc. Warlords converted 1:1 w/ no modifiers. And now in BtS, the hammers are converted 1:1 after the +:hammers:% modifiers from Forges, Factories, etc.

Well, sort of, IIRC. In Vanilla, the were converted 2:1 then run through Libraries, Markets, etc. Warlords converted 1:1 w/ no modifiers. And now in BtS, the hammers are converted 1:1 after the +% modifiers from Forges, Factories, etc.

Well, I'm willing to assume that URC. :) No, no I'm not. Let me check. :)

...OK -- you're right about Vanilla, but Warlords and BTS both have the behavior you described for BTS.

UncleJJ has given a well thought out response, but I would like to throw in a couple more ideas.

Saying that a forge + powered factory city building wealth yields a 2 gold return per hammer ratio is not correct. If you built something else in that city, you would have received the same number of hammers as the amount of gold you produced, so you are still only getting 1:1.

Corporations (although I'm a state property man myself) allow other ways to convert gold to hammers specifically and if you restrain yourself from spamming excessively in your own cities will be at a better rate than US or upgrading troops.

Incidentally, upgrading troops I consider somewhat separately from turning gold into hammers because for the most part, you are not upgrading fresh barracks troops. At least you are looking at troops that have earned a couple of bonus promotions, so there is some added value over just disbanding and producing a new one.

Now to try to explore the original question further.

The value of gold, is empire specific and is affected by things like:

Presence of a large treasury(money is worth less if you have an excessive amount)
Ability to rush buy with gold(gold becomes more valuable as there are more uses for it)
Budget surplus/deficit at 100% and 0% research (A low deficit or a surplus at 100% depreciates the value of gold and a low surplus or a deficit at 0% greatly appreciates the value of gold)
Availability of upgrade worthy troops (appreciates the value of gold)
Availability of tech purchases/sales with the AI (available purchases appreciate the value of gold, available sales depreciate the value of gold)
Availability of good land in which to expand (by force or not is mostly irrelevant) (appreciates the value of gold by the increased costs you are planning to incur in the (near future)

The value of a hammer is city specific and is affected by things like:

Presence/absence of food/hammer sources (cities with higher production potential have less need of hammer subsidies)
Presence/absence of necessary city infrastructure (cities with complete or nearly complete necessary infrastructure are in less need of hammer subsidies and more likely to be available to build wealth)
New unit needs of empire as a whole (building wealth instead of military needs to be judged carefully)

Since we are trying to determine the relative value of hammers to gold, both aspects need to be taken into account to determine the final answer, and the answer will differ from city to city as well as vary from time to time in the game.

My thoughts are that in the very early going(0-2 cities), there would be very few gold to hammer conversions that I would not find acceptable. Here is a thought experiment:

You are building a worker in your only (starting) city
Assume you have no issues with lacking things for a worker to do.
You have popped 100 gold from a hut.
A random event pops up that offers you the ability to trade your entire treasury for X hammers in your city.

At what value of X would you reject this? Almost certainly if it didn't shave at least a turn off the worker you would reject, but is that the cutoff? Should it shave 2 turns? 3 turns? Game speed factors in here and shaving a turn at quick is significantly different than shaving a turn at marathon, but pick the speed you want and run with it.

You could repeat the above with a settler instead of a worker assuming this time that you have scoped a build site and have it fogbusted or whatever safety concerns you might have. Additionally, you could try either of them with the magic question of "how much would I be willing to pay to shave a full turn off this build?"

My thinking is that in this phase, the magical event would really have to be really hosing you on the conversion ratio for me to not want to jump on it (getting extra city turns or worker turns early can be huge) and I think the ratio that was mentioned of 3.5 gold for 1 hammer was being very generous to gold at that stage.

Similar thought experiments can be done at other points in the game, but they become more complicated in that you need to consider the state of the empire in addition to the state of the specific city. I think even late game there could exist cities where you would be "happy" to pay 5 gold for one hammer (although if you are running US, you would never have to settle for such a rate), and there could also exist cities in which you would be "happy" to give up 2 hammers to produce 1 gold (though again because of the existence of the ability to build wealth, one would never have to settle for less than 1 gold for each hammer). Furthermore, these cities could exist in the same empire at the exact same time. So the question is complex indeed in my opinion.

When the AI has decided to declare war, then Hammers are worth a lot more than Gold...

These are some good informative posts. There is one issue that has me pondering some questions however. Remember those rediculous over-powered hammer cities Obsolete used to build, with almost a thousand hammers a turn? How would such a thing adjust the gold to hammer value?

Would it really make sense to claim that one is making about 3K of gold a turn here from their capital? I believe many times when you can't afford to use all the hammers on a building/unit because you HAVE TOO MUCH, that is almost some sort of penalty.

... hammer cities Obsolete used to build, with almost a thousand hammers a turn?

To be fair, when talking about hammers per turn, you really need to be ignoring the hammers that are coming from overflow from a prior build. Most of the screenshots we saw were from the first turn of a build with super high production modifiers so as much as half of the overall hammers were being supplied by overflow.

How would such a thing adjust the gold to hammer value?

This ties back into the idea that a hammer's value is different from city to city. In this type of uber-production city, the value of a hammer has been diminished significantly and if this type of city were embedded in a very large empire, the value of a hammer would probably drop below the 1 gold threshold in that city, making wealth a viable build option.

In Obsolete's empires from my observation though this was always mitigated by two factors both related to empire size:

1. His empire maintenance costs remained relatively low throughout the game, diminishing the value of gold.

2. Due in part to the small size of his empire, there was necessarily a higher implied military (or spaceship) production burden on each city. This drives the value of hammers up in all his cities.

...can't afford to use all the hammers on a building/unit because you HAVE TOO MUCH, that is almost some sort of penalty.

There is a penalty there in a way. Any excess hammers that are beyond the limit allotted for hammer overflow are converted to gold at a 1:1 rate. No worse than building Wealth and in many cases where there were build specific production multipliers, somewhat better. In the most extreme degenerate cases, significantly better.

Well at 1 city you have a special case because gold does nothing until you have a 2nd city up and are paying maintenance for it, so any conversion rate would be acceptable.

We know the classical period exchange rate is much less than 3:1 because using pyramids-universal suffrage to rushbuy is a bad strategy.

Well at 1 city you have a special case because gold does nothing until you have a 2nd city up and are paying maintenance for it, so any conversion rate would be acceptable.

Not quite true since the 1 city state is not going to be a permanent empire state unless for some reason you are torturing yourself with OCC. So gold may not have immediate value but does have potential value for your future expansion and so we can't accept any conversion rate although I agree that any reasonable conversion rate would be acceptable.

Also, with the addition of random events in BTS, gold has some added value at any point after I believe turn 20.

We know the classical period exchange rate is much less than 3:1 because using pyramids-universal suffrage to rushbuy is a bad strategy.

I think this is a very biased approach to trying to answer the question. There are other factors as to why this may be a bad approach.

1. There is the issue of anarchy going into and out of US if not Spiritual.
2. Regardless, there is a minimum of 5 turns not enjoying representations huge (during the early game) happy bonus.
3. In addition, there is a minimum of 5 turns not enjoying representations huge (during the early game) specialist bonus.
4. Most tiles being worked are high food/high hammer tiles/low commerce tiles (reflecting the relative value of production/hammers vs. commerce/gold during the time period) which do not allow the rapid stockpiling of gold for mass purchases during a US binge. (So one either has to remain in a mostly useless civic (nobody has towns at this point) for long periods of time, or swap back and forth repeatedly still encountering the above with multiple 5 turn waiting periods to get out)

So the cost of rush buying with US is not just restricted to the actual gold cost and I strongly believe it is better to think of it in terms of some mythical conversion "event" that occurs at a point when, for whatever reason (captured enemy city, goody hut, sold tech, extortion, failed wonder, gold overflow), you have a gold stockpile available to spend on things.

Vale, thankyou for clearing something up for me.

Any excess hammers that are beyond the limit allotted for hammer overflow are converted to gold at a 1:1 rate. No worse than building Wealth and in many cases where there were build specific production multipliers, somewhat better. In the most extreme degenerate cases, significantly better.

I was not sure if the excess was just pure waste or not. Now I am starting to re-think things over again. This excess hammer to gold ratio on a 1:1 scale, may this be the main reason he got away with never building cottages?

other early comparisons which may be of interest -

engineer 2h, scientist/merchant 3c
(grassland) farm+mine = 4h, 2 cottages = 2-8c

I think it's hard to argue for 1h>2c except for special cases such as wonder refund exploiting.

This is not 100% related to the OP's question but ill post my thoughts here nonetheless since it is somewhat related.

Gold itself does not have much use in the early game since most people do not upgrade units or rush-buy buildings in the early game. In the early game gold's only real use is to be converted into beakers by increasing the research slider.

So essentially, X Hammers = 1 commerce = 1 gold = 1.25 Beakers. Most people will build libraries before markets since markets are expensive and come later.

Early game cities are smaller, so you can work more production tiles with low food since you will only be working your best tiles anyways. I dont generally make comparisons such as the one below so if there is any mistakes feel free to correct me.

9 grassland cottages on rivers = 18 to 27 commerce (you wont have more than hamlets by this point) which translates into 22.5 to 33.75 beakers

6 grassland farms on rivers + 3 plains mines and your building gold = 6 commerce and 12 gold. This translates into 22.5 beakers.

The difference between the top and the bottom city is that in the top one you are developing cottages for the future (Which is an advantage in itself). So essentially, I think a good estimate of hammers to gold conversion would be something like

.67 Hammers = 1 commerce = 1 gold = 1.25 beakers early game.

or 1 Hammer = 1.5 commerce = 1.5 gold = 1.875 beakers early game.

Once you get markets, the ratio will drop since each gold is then worth 1 beaker, compared to 1.25. If you somehow get forges before markets though, the ratio increases since each hammer will produce 1.25 gold rather than 1 gold. ALso, If your financial, Hammers are worth much more than gold since cottages on rivers automaticlaly produce 3 commerce.

Another Note: If you have marble/stone, Hammers are worth LESS than gold because you can invest in wonders and then cash out a huge 2 gold per hammer invested when the wonder is built somehwere else. This also applies somewhat to industrious leaders.

To be fair to the real situation, it would seem more appropriate to compare 1 flat grassland farm and 1 grassland hill mine (food neutral + 3 hammers) to 2 flat grassland cottages (food neutral +2-8 commerce) as both are working 2 improved tiles and both are food neutral.

If I understand the OPs question though, he seems less interested in the mechanics and limits of what the game offers you in terms of resource transfer, but more interested in some sort of quantitative estimation of a "fair" exchange ratio of resources to help make decisions about a city such as:

1. Building wealth or something else?
2. Working cottages or farms/mines (although this is a related but different question than the OP's)
3. Which specialists to hire (although there are obviously other considerations in play here, all gpp points are created equal, some are just more equal than others, etc.)
4. When to use US to rush buy
5. Whether to found in or spread the mining company to this city
6. Even to some degree what to build

So the question in my mind is not "what are my options for changing resources from one type to another?", but "when should I take advantage of options to change one resource to another?".

You can reverse engineer decisions you make in the game to determine things about what your belief about a city was:

1. The five turns you built wealth in a production city at some point in the game? For whatever reason during those five turns you were valuing a hammer to be worth at most (equivalent by game mechanics) 1 gold in that city and so were happy to take advantage of that exchange.

The other 200 turns you built other stuff in that city? You were obviously valuing a hammer as worth at least (equivalent by the relevant game mechanics) 1 gold at that time in that city so were unwilling to convert.

2. That mid-late game jungle cottage utopia you founded that you rushed in some basic infrastructure before building the Kremlin for whatever reason? You were obviously valuing a hammer to be worth at least 3 gold in that city at that time. The fact that you stopped rush buying in that city after you got what you considered to be the most important infrastructure in place? Your evaluation of the worth of a hammer dropped below 3 gold in that city at that time.

3. Even the fact that you continually worked and built farms and mines inside your production city instead of cottaging everything in sight? You valued the production more than the (equivalent by game mechanics) commerce in that city. Similarly in your jungle cottage utopia, by not farming and building workshops everywhere, you made a decision that in that city commerce was worth more than the (equivalent by game mechanics) productions.

Note the use of the terms more and less in the above discussions. We can't pin down our exact evaluation just by the decisions we made because the game doesn't have continuity along the decision scale. The fact that you built wealth in a city during a turn, does not mean you valued a hammer to be worth exactly one gold in that city that turn. It could mean you valued a hammer to be worth 1/2 of a gold that turn, and so were happy to take the better exchange rate offered by the game mechanics.

Also, for what its worth I think it is important to keep commerce and gold distinct in this discussion. A decision about commerce's value relative to hammers in a city (i.e. whether to build cottages or farms/mines/workshops) may have nothing to do or even be inversely related with a decision about gold's value relative to hammers in the same city (i.e. whether to build wealth there, or whether to rush buy stuff there).

Many of these decisions are made on autopilot by city specialization decisions, but it still is worth it to try to quantify the behind the scenes thought process going into those decisions so that we can have a better understanding of why these decisions are made.

Another Note: If you have marble/stone, Hammers are worth LESS than gold because you can invest in wonders and then cash out a huge 2 gold per hammer invested when the wonder is built somewhere else. This also applies somewhat to industrious leaders.

If you don't believe this is an exploit and choose to do this in a city, then all that implies is that you were deciding that hammers were worth less than 2 gold in that city. You may actually have believed that hammers were worth 1.99998 gold in that city and by converting to gold you are making a hefty .00002 gold profit per hammer. If you don't believe this is an exploit and choose to do this in none of your cities it implies that you are deciding that hammers are worth more than 2 gold in each of those cities. Some cities hammers might be worth 2.5 gold, others worth 3.14 gold, but by taking or not taking advantage of this "amazing" offer, you have staked a claim as to what you believe the conversion rate to be at that time.

The fact that this exploit exists (along with the gold overflow exploit), does not fix a fair exchange rate, just fixes one that is available by the game mechanics.

Very nice thread - I have chosen the 3:commerce: - 1:hammers: all the way down and the war raises :hammers:value - since I dont know how to run a SE, I skipped that one (btw, has anyone got a tutorial for SE? pleeease :P).

I'll say I put 1 hammer to better use than 1 gold at all time, but 1v5 ratio is a bit overdone - maybe 1v4. Since I favour ancient till medieval eras, I don't care for the US rate or the Kremlin (not much, that is...!)

Sometimes though, I find myself with villages with nothin proper to build (again, I then build everything, ruining every attempt at a SE)... So maybe I care too much for me hammers and too little for commerce...

One thing to keep in mind is that a commerce based empire is more fragile than a hammer based empire. If you are playing on your own then 1 hammer = 2c is a good conversion rate. But if a war goes bad and your towns got pillaged or sabotage by spy (solver's unofficial patch makes spies to target towns), its gonna take hell of a time to grow it back. Bottom line if you can keep your cottages from harms way, 1h=2c if you built kremlin, 1h=3c if not. But if you are having trouble keep your cottages out of harms way, then its hard to quantify the conversion rate.

I'm the person that believes in don't put all your eggs in one basket, so I end up focusing on hammer and commerce at same time. Basically I specilized cities to either hammer heavy or cottage heavy, the ratio is roughly 1h city per 3c cities. In hammer cities, commerce is out the window, Its all about mines, watermills and workshops and farms to get the most hammer yield. In commerce cities, I still build mines on hills, watermills by riverside to ensure a decent hammer rate, the rest is all cottages.

I'd call it something like a parabola vs. time.

Start above 3:1 until you get your first settler out, then could bottom out near 1:1 if you do an early rush and crash your economy pre COL, then up to a long term 2-1 or so.

Just looking at a few of the tradeoffs that are available--the US rush late game which I would use only occasionally at 3:1 would tell me that I value 3 commerce more, and the upgrade which is 20+3:1 or say 3.5-4:1 which I normally only use on high level units when at or preparing for war tells me it is expensive. I'll sometimes find myself building a wonder with 100% bonus to take cash so that tells me I sometimes value the commerce at under 2/1.
Once in a while I'll find myself with a city or two with nothing to build and a crashed eco and I'll build research--that would argue that I value commerce less than 1:1 on rare occasions.

Great thread ppl! Uncle JJ's and Vale's posts have been astonishing and enlightening if not overwhelming.

The answer to the OP's question is so situation and playing style dependent that it is bound to spark the sort of interesting and layered discussion as we are finding here. If you play with an SE, your answer is this, if you play with a CE your answer is that. If you are partial to playing Gilgamesh, you have these disadvantages and advantages to deal with, if Julius etc. If you warmongered your way through the renaissance and have effectively dealt with Izzy, those shields aren't doing you so much good now producing the macemen that will be slaughtered by Churchill's Redcoats, and so your playing style and your valuation on specific resources will have to adapt to the changing environment.

I guess at the heart of this question is the idea of empire efficiency, but I don't expect there will be any sort of quick calculations that can be made to solve this question as there are for the topic of something like whipping.

The cool thing about Civ is that you don't have to micromanage your empire to win and to even win big good ol' intuition can be enough. But, if a micromanager is who you are by nature Civ will give you a lot of satisfaction because the game lends itself to micromanagement (i.e. deity and immortal). Efficiency-wise this may make you a better player, because underneath its pretty (inter)face Civ is a game of numbers, but strategically there are other tactics (like worldbuilder, for instance:) j/k). Other strategies involve another set of tactics, and personally I want to end my game this century and so I do not want to do all the calculations necessary to decide if outsourcing the building of a new laboratory with gold will be more advantageous than building it the old fashioned way. Most of the time, I just build it (but it's nice to have the option and by that time i usually have a nice stack of cash to opt with).

All that said, i found myself the other night toiling for an hour trying to decide if i should convert one of my main cottaged commerce cities to waterwheels. It was a river city and had built a levee and I was running US and SP with countless towns and I already decided to put Ironworks there because it had some nice hills and a couple floodplains to boot, but deciding b/t 2F2H8C and 3F3H3C was a difficult task. Those 5 extra C's helped me to catch up and then surpass all in the tech race, did I want to start messing with that? But then again, thae extra food from the watermills would support several engineers and with all the production multipliers, it might be worth it.

the numbers looked like this (i was running 40/50/0/10):

1H=6.2 shields (w/ 1/2 eng sp, +210% bldg/civic bonus).

5C=4 gold, 8.375beakers (oxford et. al.), and .75 esp

(this was the first time i ever built ironworks and oxford in the same city as it just fit this time around, maybe that was the crux of the problem)

intuitively, it did not seem like the 6.2 hammers would be worth all the other stuff i was getting with the 5 commerce, so i kept the towns instead of switching over to watermills.

I am no economist so forgive my lack of precision but I think the opening question is so hard to answer because shields and gold represent two different economic resource classifications, where shields (and beakers) are primary and gold is secondary (at least after maintenance costs) and so converting the one to the other in an absolute sense is impossible.

In the game, hammers represent the raw materials of an empire and so until one has enough to win, the player will go about obtaining those materials in whatever way feasible at the time. Maybe that way is war, maybe that way is gold, maybe it is growth, whatever, but obtaining the materials is the primary objective, having gold only gives flexibility to one's options.

The same goes for science, beakers are the raw intellectual resources of an empire, and so the player's primary concern is to get enough beakers to win. To do this war is an option but so is tech trading, running representation, espionage etc. Again, having gold (or commerce) adds flexibility to one's options.

If the player's neighbor is Monty or Napoleon and the player knows what is good for him he will be producing lots of soldiers and so shields tend towards being priceless. If Mansa Musa is his neighbor, war is avoidable but will he win the tech race? He better start spamming cottages for commerce, shields will be important too but not so existentially important as in the first case.

As soon as a tile is improved to be commerce based, a potential workshop has been lost. if a workshop is built is there enough food elsewhere to cover it? there goes another tile. Farming the floodplains to mine the hills gives up what in commerce? circular and interelated and complex, no absolute answer here, exactly why we all play Civ.

I think it's about balance and everyone's balance and every game is different. it's about how much of one resource is enough at this particular point in time without taking away too much from another. some people eat more than others. to each his own.

This whole thread is way too complicated. :p

Just answer 2 questions:
Would you rather work Financial coast or farmed plain?
Would you rather work Non-financial coast or farmed plain?

Just answer 2 questions:
Would you rather work Financial coast or farmed plain?
Would you rather work Non-financial coast or farmed plain?
Do I have a lighthouse? :lol:

The farmed plain in both cases.

I think in the begging game, it would actually be something like 2:hammers: to 1:commerce: because of the abundance of hammers that are available through chops. I would say that sometime in the late classical-mid renaissance era it evens out. By the late era, hammers finally become more important.

If you would pick a farmed plain over financial coast you shouldn't play financial at all.

If you would pick a farmed plain over financial coast you shouldn't play financial at all.

eexactly. :goodjob:

The question of when to use build gold or even Build research cannot be answered easily. There is no fair exchange rate, it all depends on the situation as others have already mentioned. I have personally found that in the early game, beakers are the most important resource to get to certain "Milestone" economic tech's. Hammers are abundant due to hills and slavery/chopping, food is abundant due to resources, but research is not abundant (Unless your financial or have gems/gold). Cottages take time to develop, and scientists without representation are good, but not great. To me, the early Milestone techs are Currecy, Code of Laws and Civil Service.

When you use build research or build gold to convert hammers into beakers to get to these 3 milestone tech's faster, you should not only count the actual conversion rate, which is 1 hammer for 1 beaker or 1 hammer for 1 gold, but instead count the extra beakers you gain for getting to those milestone tech's quicker. If you get Currency 5 turns earlier than you would otherwise, thats an extra +2 commerce per city for 5 extra turns. If you get to code of laws quicker, you will get Courthouses that much faster(You may even be in a religion race to get code of laws first). If you get to Civil Service quicker, you will get Beauracracy that much faster.

Im not going to number crunch and attempt to calculate what the actual conversion rate is of hammers to beakers when taking into account all of these things, because that would take too much time. And its difficult to figure out what the future value of 1 beaker is compared to 1 beaker now in CIV. But the reason I mentioned all of this is because I think build gold/build research does not get the love it deserves. I find both of these features to be tremendously useful in atleast one spot in all of my games. If I had the screenshots of my old "Manufactured Science" solo game, I would point you guys towards it, but unfortunately I lost the report. In that game, I played an emperor highlands game by shutting off research at Alphabet and using build research/build gold to provide my beakers the rest of the way. I won a domination victory sometime around 1750 AD. Obviously highlands would favor build research/build gold because of its abundance of hammers, but the feature is useful in other games also.

-------------------------------------------------

Now, going the opposite way, when should you convert gold into hammers? The best time is around the point you get democracy, when you have +100 gold modifiers and no factories/powerplants yet. By this point in the game, the effectiveness of slavery has diminished (Your cities are larger), your cottages are developed. Thus research/gold is abundant, but production might not necesarrily be. If you had 3 hills per cities in the early game with a 6 happiness cap, you can work all 3 hills and you have huge production per tile, but if you have 3 hills in the renaissance with a 14 happiness cap, hammers are much more important. Especially since buildings get more and more expensive as the game progresses. While troop building does not take a big hit since slavery is replaced by drafting, there are many important buildings during this time that must be built, and alot of new buildings have been added in BtS (Custom Houses/Intelligence Agencies/Jails are now more important). Combine this with the fact that AI tech's slower, and you can afford to convert gold into hammers.

To conclude, I think hammers are worth least right after you get alphabet, since your research is weak but hammers are more abundant. To me, it is worth converting hammers into gold or beakers at this point to get important techs. Gold is worth least right after you get Democracy(While I could say banking here, universal Suffrage is allowed at democracy so ill go with that one), since your cottages are developed, you have +100% modifiers to gold, and your production will generally be weakest at this time.

This whole thread is way too complicated. :p

Just answer 2 questions:
Would you rather work Financial coast or farmed plain?
Would you rather work Non-financial coast or farmed plain?

the problem w/this is that it is never a one-to-one tile tradeoff. most people would answer financial coast, but it assumes production is coming from a tile that gives more hammers than the farmed plain. if i had no other production i would use first any food resources, then the farmed plain and then the lighthoused coast.
.

If you would pick a farmed plain over financial coast you shouldn't play financial at all.

Most likely a farmed plain would be 2f 1h 1g, as I rarely seem to see fresh water lakes compared to rivers. In addition, if it has come down to working a farmed plain or financial coast, all the good cottaged land and all resources in the bfc have been taken up, and if its coastal there aren't going to be many hammers anyway so they become much more valuable.

Hmm...I did something on this a while back. Basically, you can use the specialist values as a system of linear equations, although it is way overspecificed and you end up without a perfect solution. The closest "clean" solution shows 4F = 3H = 2B = 2G = 1C (= 1EP I guess). I've attached a spreadsheet I wrote a while back which takes into account civics, building multipliers, science slider, etc. to compute the "real" value in a city (e.g. if you have Ironworks raw hammers become much more valuable).

Darrell

Here's the attachment, forgot I couldn't directly upload .xls files :blush:.

Darrell

To the theoretician I am, this topic is very interesting. Thanks all !

When you have a wall street city with a +200% bonus for gold, and you also have the Kremlin and running Universal Suffrage, you get 3:gold: per :hammers: spent in that city on Wealth, and you can spend 2:gold: for 1:hammers: by rushing buildings in other cities.
By doing that, you are transferring production from your WS city at a rate of +50%.

I used not to build wealth except if I had nothing else to do, and I also thought that rush-buying under Universal Suffrage was too expensive. I'll have to rethink this.

When you have a wall street city with a +200% bonus for gold, and you also have the Kremlin and running Universal Suffrage, you get 3:gold: per :hammers: spent in that city on Wealth.

Nope. You always get 1:gold: per :hammers: building Wealth.

National wonders also distort the local balance. You will always work coast with Oxford University and always work farmed plains with the Iron Works.

Personally I use a rough rule of thumb 1h to 2g. Working cottages which can still grow and getting commerce in general is more important in my commerce-focused cities, while commerce is last priority in cities with low hammer counts. The latter are usually coastal cities even though my intention for building them is usually soley for bringing in more commerce!

The value of gold, is empire specific and is affected by things like:


vale, May I add two more circumstances where the value of gold can change.

1. The value of gold may appreciate slightly when you are near to completing research-boosting buildings in high commerce cities. Or vice versa if you're building wealth improving buildings. For example I will run a lower science slider than usual as I am about to complete universities in my important cities. Then when I get them I boost the science slider to higher than normal levels. This is micromanaging for a fairly local gain in beaker/gold output. Of course this depends on whether there is a critical tech you need before the universities will be built.

2. You already mentioned it can be worth keeping money in your treasury due to random events which sometimes require gold. How about keeping enough so that the reserve bank (I think it's called) random event can pop up. I am not sure how much gold you need before it can occur but I assume it is at least a few hundred gold, with the event probably being more likely the more gold in the treasury. Does anyone know much about this random event and how to inrease its likelihood of occuring?

Thanks frob2900, UncleJJ, vale, DaveMcW, and others...
I'm always delighted to read threads so informative as these and it's thanks to the reliable, informative contributions you make.:goodjob:

Well overall I'd say its between 3 and 5, and the more you have of something the less it is worth. (and the less you have, the more it is worth)

Possible conversion mechanisms G:H [either both raw or both processed]

Wealth
1:1

US+Upgrading
3:1

Tile Replacement
Early
Village: Mine [Village:Watermill]
3:2 [3:1]

Middle
PP FS Town: RP Watermill/Lumbermill
7:2 =3.5:1

Late
US FS PP Town: Caste SP Workshop
7:3 = [2.3:1]

Also Mining Inc. (although those numbers will change in patches)

Other things to consider: midgame, gold multipliers> hammer multipliers

Basically I'd say it depends on your strategy, if you play CE+Peaceful , the Few hammers you have are worth more
if you play more SE+Warring, the little bit of gold you have is worth more [the cottages are low level most of the time]

What about WE (watermill/workshop economy) ? Gold is worth nothing like production.

A spearman defeats a tank.:goodjob: