RBtS1b - The Thief Economy

Instead of -16 at 60% espionage you are break even at 60% with just these 2 cities building wealth instead of Markets (which won't be of much use in these commerce poor cities).

ungy said:

Actually I stand by the market builds. We are playing a long game and they also give happy (+1 ATM). As the result of the pie bomb, we are not critically short espionage. None of our cities are that commerce poor.

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This may be a matter of style, but both of those cities (with current tile configurations) have a max commerce of 2 towns (plus sea tiles). Assuming an average of ~ 7 commerce per town that is only 14 commerce per city which with a market is a measly 3.5 commerce.

Mayapan makes 7.2 commerce now, building wealth it makes 16.2, a difference of 9 commerce. If you build wealth here for 100 turns that is 900 commerce. if you build a market (and it finished this turn for simplicity's sake) that 7.2 commerce * 1.25= 9. Now assume this turn that those cottages/hamlets became towns this turn. The base commerce would still only be 8.8 (with the Market) it is * 1.25= 11. You would need to add a Bank, Market, and Grocer right now in that city to make it as profitable as building wealth is. When Mayapan adds pop. if you worked the plains mines you would really be raking in the dough building wealth. Right now the only building worth putting in those 2 cities is a courthouse

As for Happiness, maybe in the future, but right now those cities are only size 5. Both cities will have a happy cap of 9 (in 14 (Mayapan) and 23 turns (Chichen Itza) turns when the last whip wears off). That is four pop. away.

To my mind in those two cities a market is most useful for running Merchant specialists. Merchant specialist provide commerce (+3) and can cash bomb if you get a Great merchant (though neither of these cities would be particularly good as a Great Person generator). The problem though is that it is just better to build wealth and work a mine (b/c you get one extra food or commerce depending on the mine type) instead of running the merchant. In the long run I would never build a market in Mayapan (just build units/missionaries or wealth there forever). Mayapan is just a good production city, but not much else. It will never get huge since it only has the fish (plains cows are terrible) and running specialists in Mayapan is pointless. As Mayapan grows assign citizens to work the high hammer tiles for more wealth/units etc. Chichen Itza is different, it has much less production and 2 good food resources, unlike Mayapan as Chichen Itza grows you can assign Merchant specialists (or other specialists if you like) b/c none of the remaining tiles are particularly attractive. However Mayapan in currently only size 5. I think the strongest move is to simply grow Mayapan to its size limit while building wealth, then switch over to a market->whip the market on the 2nd turn of the build and put the overflow into another specialist allowing building (for your variant the best specialists to assign are firstly Spies, then Merchants, then Priests, then Artists/Engineers, lastly Scientists) so I would overflow to a Grocer or temple. Once that builds finished I would go back to building wealth in Mayapan until pop. exceeds happy/health limit or until there is no more surplus food for assigning specialists. Then go back to building wealth.

In demonstrating the benefits of building wealth I just picked two cities that were not terribly important to your empire to demonstrate the potential they had in aiding your research...err spying (and would fit in 1 screen shot). If you toyed around with it you can probably find other cities that may even be better for building wealth than these 2. Many will cringe at this, but I often find that when I put my cap on emphasize production while in Bureaucracy and build wealth in my cap that alone allows me to increase my whole civ's research by 20% !

Building wealth is one of the most underused strats, oddly it is also one of the strongest. I think people just find it "wasteful" not to produce something "tangible"