I'm playing a chieftain game as churchill, control a fairly large empire(largest of all) have 4 vassals, have built versailles to help the maintainance, am going to build forbidden palace soon. BTS 3.17, and I've got some sort of problem: the demographic screen shows me besting the AI in every category by far, except for the last one. Exports-Imports gives me -122, very last out of every one. infact, no other AI has a negative number there! this seems very bad, but is it? is there something i can do about it? or is it just there for fun and not really an important game mechanic?

Okay...50 minutes and no one has posted, despite 9 views...i take it its a stupid question?

It's not important at all. Just look at what resources you're trading.

Very little in that screen is meaningful, except maybe production and soldiers if you can't scout the enemy and can't see their power graph (yeah right).

okay, thanks. I was worried I had screwed up somewhere, and badly.

That is definitely the least important category by far. The number is (IIRC) :commerce: given to others in trade: :commerce: you receive in trade. A negative number is when you give more than you take. It means next to nothing. As TMIT said, very little there means much. I'd add GNP to the list of being somewhat important but don't evaluate you game by it.

Actually if I'm not mistaken you want to be last on the default display of import/export, firaxis got it mixed up.
I think a negative number means you're selling(exporting) more, aka getting more commerce than others get from you.

It's not important at all. Just look at what resources you're trading.

Very little in that screen is meaningful, except maybe production and soldiers if you can't scout the enemy and can't see their power graph (yeah right).

I use all the categories extensivly. While i agree that the inports / exports is one of the least useful(just show how much you are getting from traderoutes compared to how much others are getting from you), it is not completly so...
The one i actually use least is the age category. Anyone know how this is calculated? I assume it have something to do with your health cap? Population is useful for finding out your portion of big cities compared to other people(and the portion of big cities in the world), mfg, crop yeild, gnp and power are insanely useful for finding out what is going on in the world and how you are doing compared to other people. The happiness count should be as close to 50% as possible pretty much at all times in the early game, being much higher means you haven't grown your cities enough. Of course being under 50% is never good...

The one i actually use least is the age category. Anyone know how this is calculated? I assume it have something to do with your health cap?
Quoting The inner workings of the Demo screen explained (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=163098) with a bit of added emphasis:
Life Expectancy- Works on the same principle as the approval rate except it deals with health and sickness. The formula is health / health + sickness. At the beginning of the game the default is 30 years. You can see the total for health and sickness of each city in the F1 screen.

Ya thats what i assumed it was... Largely useless in the early game, but less so later in the game, about the same as approval rate then.

If you are late in the game and have a low life expectancy it might simply mean you have an efficient empire utilizing the health cap as well as you can. Even unhealthiness doesn't have to be that bad, so it's next to meaningless.

Sure it is not useful to find out about their overal effeciency, however it is useful to see if they would like more health resources or not...

I use all the categories extensivly. While i agree that the inports / exports is one of the least useful(just show how much you are getting from traderoutes compared to how much others are getting from you), it is not completly so...
The one i actually use least is the age category. Anyone know how this is calculated? I assume it have something to do with your health cap? Population is useful for finding out your portion of big cities compared to other people(and the portion of big cities in the world), mfg, crop yeild, gnp and power are insanely useful for finding out what is going on in the world and how you are doing compared to other people. The happiness count should be as close to 50% as possible pretty much at all times in the early game, being much higher means you haven't grown your cities enough. Of course being under 50% is never good...

And what % of these things available on the demo screen can't be derived - more meaningfully - from looking at the map? I guess in the VERY early goings, before you open borders and explore every AI near you, you can't see and it'd be marginally useful (but does it matter? You're still just trying to improve your position as much as possible at that point via expansion). After you open borders though...you can just LOOK at the opposing cities, right on the map, and see what's going on. Hell, if you're really lazy, just wait till most sites are settled, build 1-3 scouts, and press "E". Once the barbs are gone these guys (even just 1 really) will map the continent really nicely.

You can see when someone research BW, HBR, IW from the map? You can see what is going on on another continent before astro? Also hammers saved on units not used to explore can instead be used on other things. Exploring just for info you can get elsewhere is not terribly useful. Finding who you are going to attack or getting traderoutes is sure nice, but for finding out how their production / research rate / crop yeild is doing, there isn't anything better than graphs/demo screen.

Whoa, graphs are a completely different story. My issue with the demo screen is that it only shows your position relative to an average and the highest leader. You can't really assign this performance to anybody. I suppose it would let you know there's a runaway AI on another continent before you meet it. However, what does this let you DO about it again?

You can tell what techs people have by going into the tech trade screen (or early on, BW from them switching to slavery or whatever). This is not the same screen that gives you import/export (that's the only screen that I feel is nigh useless). I prefer the power graph to the soldiers rating by far, especially because you know WHO has that sharp stick that way. Approval rating? Seriously? Just look at your cities! That screen isn't very useful, I can't remember the last time I made a different decision after looking at it, unlike culture, power, etc graphs.

And trade routes, exact locations of cities, and what improvements those cities have (specifically, resources and hammer improvements), can only be attained via OB scouting or map trades, and only one of those options is available for much of the game.

Welcome to the Forums crackersncheese. :beer:

What the demo screen does is giving numbers to the graphs. Without knowing the numbers you can't calculate much from the graphs either(though ofc you can get some info or just count the numbers in the early game). It also allow you to figure out how high graphs someone you don't have the graphs of have. I seldom use the average number(except to figure out people i don't have the graphs of), but the worst / best in the world is highly useful...