The value of Commerce and Great People Points

I want to know at what rates I can give up and , for (or ) and

I feel I'm relying too much in hammers and food, and don't build many cottages or great people. Especially early in the game, when my cities are not yet specialized towards a specific role.
I often manage to build the pyramids and take the representation civic for +3 , but I'm still not assigning permanent specialists. Only when the happiness cap is reached, do I stop growth by assigning the required number of specialists (that is if I don't whip). So generally I maximize growth and production, and neglect commerce and specialists. But I think that for certain tiles, it might be better not to work them, but to assign a specialist, or work a cottage.
I find myself mainly working the grassland and plains forests when all the high yield tiles are covered. I tend to preserve those forests for lumber mills.

What I'd like to discuss in this thread is the exchange rate of food/production vs. commerce and GPPs.
This rate is by no means fixed throughout the game. At the start, 3 + the specialist production/commerce are better than 2 + 1 from a grassland forest, however as the number of cities increases, and in the meantime the number of GPs born, the value of declines.
The same for . I find tiles that have 1, 2, or 3 and 2 . Is it worth it to lose the 1 to take 3 extra , or 2 , or 1 ? Assume the condition of sustained working of the selected tile (I know I can change all my tiles and specialists to maximize commerce, GPPs, food, or production for one or few turns, would I be in desperate need, this is not the focus here).
Later on, I have the same when I decide if I want a RR mine/lumber mill/workshop or a cottage/windmill. This is however more dependent on the situation, as civics have major impact.

I think you'll hear the word "situational" a lot in this thread

An immediate problem I notice with your query is that the one side of your equation isn't exactly balanced... Espionage points don't translate evenly with commerce/science as far as their "value" goes. A spy economy may need more raw juice than a cottage economy, making it an entirely different formula for how much each commerce point is worth in a cottage economy versus an espionage economy. If someone does give you a formula, "One food is worth 0.75 hammers and .82234 commerce," it will probably get you into more trouble than it gets you out of.

Or with great people - what kind of great people are you relying on? GPP with the intent of making great engineers to grab wonders would have a notably different "value" than great scientists being produced from a great library farm city. A great prophet who builds you the Church of Nativity and ends up giving you a 30% margin to fiddle with on your sliders is worth more than a great artist in most every case... But isn't all that useful depending on the situation. I don't see how a hard and fast formula could be produced without some *very* specific criteria - and even then, you're fighting the "Damnit, I didn't want that merchant!" factor if you're being so precise with GPP production. I mean, why else would so many people complain about the National Epic "corrupting" their great person farms?

As a general rule for me, the guideline I follow is set by my opposition. I'll value commerce/GPP very differently in a game where Gandhi, Mansa Musa, and Wang Kon are major players than in one where they are Ragnar, Shaka, and Monty are my main opposition. I'm finding myself making more use of "hybrid" squares like watermills these days, and even popping on Universal Sufferage from time to time to give a heavy cottage economy some so-so production... But there really isn't a hard and fast rule as to how much each commerce/GPP point is worth.

Rather than getting a static idea of the "value" of each type of point relative to others and planning for a static economic/GP model, it can be a good idea to plan for soft economy changes... Use representation/free religion for science boosts, police state/organized religion for production boosts, and have a more middle of the road economy that doesn't specialize too much. A few cottages, a few watermills, a few mines, a few farms, etc... And a few specialized cities thrown in the mix - even in a generalist society, there's usually one Wall Street city, one Oxford University city, one Ironworks city, one Heroic Epic city, etc.

Hope you enjoyed my non-answer

I quandry I have never solved is that even when the enemy and I have about the same size/number of cities, his terrain is full of cottages and farms, whereas mine is a mix of watermills, windmills, workshops, cottages (and a few farms and mines), but I still end up economically and industrially ahead by middle ages/rennaissance.

That said, +1 will always be worth more than or until happiness/health limits are reached. It all comes down to your environment, though. If you have lots of rivers/floodplains, I suggest building a lot of watermills. You'll then have good , and , allowing specialists later on. If your full of forests, you may want to chop some down on hills and a few flatlands to make a few windmills/farms. Next adopt HR and you have lots of (from forests) and (from units). Use this as well as the extra to run a lot of specialists.

I rarely build watermills, windmills and few workshops, farm it, cattage it or mine it is my motto. Like the guy said its situational. Your leader will influence a lot and then your choice between SE or CE if you specialise in that way. mixing the speciality of cities is OK, GP farm, Scince city, production etc, some may overlap, but mixing your longterm strategy by mixing and matching the emphasis of what you want from your land dilutes and is submaximal. As this game challanges you you need to become more and more ruthless about the direction you chose and putting everything into that direction.

If you want to run a CE then cottage almost every tile that has 2 or more food, if you are SE then don't be tempted to cottage that floodplain, that way leads maddness.

As the levels go up prince and above, in my humble prince/monarch opinion, you need to be more and more goal directed and messing about with 'maybe i'll put a windmill there for a change' will end you up dead. Of course there will be circumstcnaces where you make an active choice to work a tile differently but that should be for a specific justifiable reason that again is part of the long term plan. The early game is vastly important so you need to have a good idea what you doing from the get go or you will end up submaximal in your ability to make the most of your eventual strategy.

Hey.

My oppinion is the following:
In the early game food AND production is vital. Commerce you can get from special resources (ivory, gems gold etc) and sea tiles.
In mid games you can begin thinking about cottageing the tiles.

The AI has such a huge advantage in producing bulidings and units that you MUST worry about production. Even if you have one or two "military producing" or "wonder producing" cities with high prod values you should care about the other cities' production. It is because if you can not sustain speed in building at least the core buildings in (nearly) all of your cities your economy will be ruined very soon...

As Aftershafter said, it's all situational.
In a military city you need reasonable production, to build Heroic Epic and West Point and to turn out units rapidly, and enough food to support that production. Research and GP points scarcely matter there. In a commerce city you need cottages (and watch them ! Built early, the city governor tends to ignore them and put citizens to work other tiles whose benefits are more immediately apparent), enough production to construct Wall Street and, probably, Oxford Univ., and again enough food to support these. This city is also the ideal place for the shrine of your state religion. Production cities, those with plenty of mines and minerals, and preferably lots of riverside tiles for levees and dams, just need enough food to support the production tiles: one such city can well be assigned to Wonder-building.
Specialists ? I may assign a few to keep cities from developing "angry" citizens but usually wait until my cities have nowhere else for citizens to work. Free specialists are of course always welcome.

Make every city a commerce city, then rush buy whatever you need, using Universal Suffrage.

jackdog said:

I rarely build watermills, windmills and few workshops, farm it, cattage it or mine it is my motto. Like the guy said its situational. Your leader will influence a lot and then your choice between SE or CE if you specialise in that way. mixing the speciality of cities is OK, GP farm, Scince city, production etc, some may overlap, but mixing your longterm strategy by mixing and matching the emphasis of what you want from your land dilutes and is submaximal. As this game challanges you you need to become more and more ruthless about the direction you chose and putting everything into that direction.

If you want to run a CE then cottage almost every tile that has 2 or more food, if you are SE then don't be tempted to cottage that floodplain, that way leads maddness.

As the levels go up prince and above, in my humble prince/monarch opinion, you need to be more and more goal directed and messing about with 'maybe i'll put a windmill there for a change' will end you up dead. Of course there will be circumstcnaces where you make an active choice to work a tile differently but that should be for a specific justifiable reason that again is part of the long term plan. The early game is vastly important so you need to have a good idea what you doing from the get go or you will end up submaximal in your ability to make the most of your eventual strategy.

Click to expand...

I'm not mixing and matching; in my GP farm I place windmills on hills instead of mines, because 2 is less important than 1 and 1 there (and almost everywhere else). In my military city, I build watermills on the riversides, and after Guilds and Chemistry/CS I build workshops. I build cottages (at least 1-2 per city) wherever theres room.

Also while initially windmills are initially about equal to mines they get much better over time. Also, while farms start out way better than workshops, a few techs later its +1 to -1 +3 .

Powerslave said:

Make every city a commerce city, then rush buy whatever you need, using Universal Suffrage.

Click to expand...

This is very unwise, since each you buy costs 3 . Given max techs/civics, each town makes 1 and 7 , or 3.33 . Given max techs/civics, each workshop makes 4 .

K.F. Huszár;6178114 said:

Hey.

My oppinion is the following:
In the early game food AND production is vital. Commerce you can get from special resources (ivory, gems gold etc) and sea tiles.
In mid games you can begin thinking about cottageing the tiles.

The AI has such a huge advantage in producing bulidings and units that you MUST worry about production. Even if you have one or two "military producing" or "wonder producing" cities with high prod values you should care about the other cities' production. It is because if you can not sustain speed in building at least the core buildings in (nearly) all of your cities your economy will be ruined very soon...

Click to expand...

Don't forget the time it takes for cottages to grow. Just a couple of flood plain cottages built early can be really important for your ecnomoy later on.

Wilhelmus said:

I feel I'm relying too much in hammers and food, and don't build many cottages or great people. Especially early in the game, when my cities are not yet specialized towards a specific role.
...
What I'd like to discuss in this thread is the exchange rate of food/production vs. commerce and GPPs.

Click to expand...

I think you're asking the wrong question -- imagine there was a "hammer slider" that you could adjust that would devote a certain percentage of your (non-farm) land to hammer production and the rest to commerce production. You would adjust this slider depending on what your goals are -- e.g. if you need lots of military units, you would raise this slider very high, but if you needed to research some tech ASAP, you would set this slider very low.

While not as convenient as the other ones, this slider really does exist in the game -- you raise it by working hammer producing tiles, and you lower it by working commerce producting tiles. (Or use the appropriate specialists)