It's All About The Numbaz: Financial vs Organized

Alright, I got some hard numbers from my last Civ game, in 1800 AD, I have 51 cities. Looking at my first 20 cities, they have an average of 16.5 population, and gain an additional 9.25 commerce each over what they would have without financial.

My Civic upkeep cost is 237 (I'm running Democracy, Free Speech, Enancipation, Free Market and Organized Religion), which is 4.6 per city.

So, I get an additonal 9.25 commerce from Financial, and an additional 4.6 gold from Organized. Even with the half-priced Org buildings that doesn't seem like much of a contest. Especially since the 9.25 commerce translates to around 14 extra science or gold with all of the modifiers.

So, there we go Fin >> Org without the halfpriced buildings.
Fin > Org even with the half priced buildings.

The only way I can see Org coming out on top is if you build absolutely no cottages in your entire empire. But more on that in the next topic.

Obviously financial is going to outpower organized late in the game across a 50+ city empire. That's a nonstarter.

However, does that mean it's a better trait? Perhaps, but I would argue that early game > late game and the ability to support additional cities early on without necessarily having to work a pile of cottages is quite advantageous. Also, the ability to whip a courthouse for 2 pop in newly captured cities really helps early conquest over and above laying down cottages in these cities which take time to develop.

Overall I would say that financial is better than organized, but I wouldn't sell organized short as--when properly used--it can be quite powerful as well.

Certainly early game > late game. I guess that's another thing to figure out, at what point does Financial become better? For me I would say it's right from the start and stays that way, since I build a lot of cottages near my first town, but that might be my style of play.

51 cities?! What kind of game are you playing? I guess some people play types vastly different from my own.

I agree that financial is more powerful in the abstract, which I have argued elsewhere, but all traits are more or less situationally dependent. Financial is just less so than all the rest imo.
However there are playstyles where several other traits are more beneficial. For me, if I'm not doing an experiment I'll not decide beforehand what I'm going to do -> Financial will give most utility since it will support a wide range of behavior. I don't base my leader choices purely on what power they'll give me though..

Organized has the best half-priced buildings next to expansive. Cheap factories, courthouses, and lighthouses (I think). All three are buildings that you will build in all of your coastal cities eventually. The savings in hammer is pretty nice too. Organized may not be a great primary trait but it provides great support for any other trait.

In the really early goings you can build cottages and work water tiles, both of which get huge relative boosts from financial, but you can't build courthouses and you won't have civic upkeep costs. Organized loses to -everything- at this point in the game.

Civic upkeep costs never even become that big a deal. It's maintenance costs that really matter. Thus, how good organized is is really based off how wide that window is during which organized leaders have built their courthouses, but non-organized ones haven't.

That window gets you through the classical era somewhat faster, and raises your early EP substantially, but that's it. After that... minor savings from halved civic upkeep costs, woo. Yeah, I consider organized the 4th trait from the bottom, standing above only Protective (3rd worst), Imperialistic (2rd worst), and Aggressive (worst).

Maben said:

51 cities?! What kind of game are you playing? I guess some people play types vastly different from my own.

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51 Cities is from a game where I decided to play Monarch, standard map size and disable the domination victory condition. If domination had been left on, I would have already won it by now. Instead a won via Conquest.

I don't think Organized is a bad trait, just worse than financial. Financial is best, and Organized comes in around 2nd - 5th depending on your overall strategy.

Depends on what game you want, but i promise you for my domination wins organized gives me higher score than financial. (sooner victory cause of those easy to whip courthouses) For domination it's about keeping expenses down so you can keep on conquering. Thats where organized shines and far outstrips financial. (I can easily shave off 100 years at least for my domination victory, like in the 1400's instead 1500's for instance)

I tend to end up doing a hybrid economy late game if i get to that point, so i run representation with sushi everywhere for loads of specialists and cottages all over the place. The impact for financial isn't that huge then, at that point it's more about big cities quick and infrastructure which decides my research potential. (which is what's most important with the commerce yes? ) So since i used organized to get a big empire faster and the infrastructure up sooner, you can't really compare it. So any math you do can't give a true answer for this, it's all situational.

Financial is for more peaceful victories, Organized is the warmongers preferred trait. (I absolutely hate not being able to whip courthouses for 2 pop, it's sooooo useful) And for best trait, Charismatic hands down, no other trait gives more impact on your game from the start.(+2 city size? yes please!) People overrate financial way too much, it's a good trait but by no means the best. In my opinion Philosophical, Industrious and Organized can be just as good if you use them right.

Sjaramei said:

Financial is for more peaceful victories, Organized is the warmongers preferred trait.

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how much money you save on the civics part depends on what you're running, of course. some of the wartime civics don't come cheap. for example police state/slavery, those are high/medium upkeep respectively compared to medium/low in his democracy/free speech example (i'm reading "democracy" as the universal suffrage civic). and your empire is growing while you're out there conquering. civic costs are based on population. even tho your captured cities don't cost maintenance while they're in revolt, i assume the population counts towards your civic upkeep? so a warmonger who's keeping cities and whipping away the population for those cheap courthouses is going to be facing rapidly rising civic upkeep whereas a peaceful leader won't be.

i love playing as gandhi. but i played as asoka not terribly long ago, he's spiritual/organized, and had fun. he really rocks, you can do all kinds of tricks to get ready for war with no-anarchy civic swaps, and then go out and clobber folks, recover from that, rinse / repeat, and afford it all. i never go to war as gandhi. asoka seems kind of made for it, but i never realized it until i tried it.

ps of course if you're in nationhood that's free compared to the OP's low upkeep free speech, so org doesn't benefit there. but hey, win some lose some *giggle*. and the cheap buildings are fantastic.

I rank Organized really, really, really low.

I've no problem running at 100% Beakers without Organized for most of the game coming up with Gold from trades, resource trades and pillaging. Even with No Tech Trading you can just run Merchant specialists. And after I get the Media wonders I have positive Gold even at 0% gold slider, since musicals/ singles/ movies trade for around 12 gold/ turn each.

Cheers,

Dai

Aggressive as the worst trait? Someone doesn't play a conquering style of game. Aggressive is a solid trait because of the FREE promotion that unlocks a nice variety of first promotions for your units. The cheap barracks is also very handy. It's probably not top-3 but it is definitely not the worst (imperialistic/protective).

As has already been stated, organized is a great domination/conquest trait and is for early expansion which imo is the most important phase of the game. When financial is powering you to space victory the game is usually in the bag. When organized is helping you expand your territory the game is usually hanging in the balance.

Also I find Financial to be a superior warmonger trait compared to Organized. Financial scales linearly with the amount of land under your control- and controlling land is the point of warmongering right?

I know very well you need some sort of economic boost to support a world empire, but I think even in this case Financial is superior to Organized.

Cheers,

Dai

financial requires you to be working cottages which do not provide you with any production value prior to universal sufferage and growth into towns.

organized requires no such thing freeing you up to work farms (whip/draft) and production tiles thus making it a superior warmongering trait.

when you are going for (especially early) domination wins production >>>> commerce

I think Organized's big redeeming factor compared to Financial is its +100% buildings. Probably the thing I like least about Organized is that it's not nearly as useful if you're running no-low upkeep civics, but even then, the fast courthouses and lighthouses are nothing to sneeze at.

futurehermit said:

Perhaps, but I would argue that early game > late game and the ability to support additional cities early on without necessarily having to work a pile of cottages is quite advantageous.

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^^This.

futurehermit said:

financial requires you to be working cottages which do not provide you with any production value prior to universal sufferage and growth into towns.

organized requires no such thing freeing you up to work farms (whip/draft) and production tiles thus making it a superior warmongering trait.

when you are going for (especially early) domination wins production >>>> commerce

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Not always. If you can get all or mostly coastal cities and get the collossus early those sea tiles with 4 commerce can be quite productive. Some seafood, a few mines and several seatiles can get you alot of production/commerce which are generally unpillagable (providing you have a decent navy). Financial does not always need cottages to be effective, but most of the time it does.

DigitalBoy said:

I think Organized's big redeeming factor compared to Financial is its +100% buildings.

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Absolutely. Cheap courthouses are obviously wonderful things to have, and can greatly help your early game expansion. Then later on, cheap factories means you can industrialize very quickly and get that mid-to-late game boost. It's especially amusing when you play Fredrick, whos assembly plant builds even faster with coal, and turns out will build overall faster then a forge.

financial is superior on any level where you don't need courthouses. This means monarch and below. On emperor+ organized is starting to show it's value.

futurehermit said:

financial requires you to be working cottages which do not provide you with any production value prior to universal sufferage and growth into towns.

organized requires no such thing freeing you up to work farms (whip/draft) and production tiles thus making it a superior warmongering trait.

when you are going for (especially early) domination wins production >>>> commerce

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You get the +1 commerce bonus in a variety of tiles not just cottages (ivory, seafood, gems, gold, windmills etc) That is why Financial is good even if you are running a specialist economy, especially with lots of coastal cities.

One downside with Financial is that on harder levels, you can become OVERreliant on working those commerce-boosted tiles to maintain your regular economy.

So in a war situation, you can't always make that switch to high-hammer tiles and expensive war civics that you would do with ANY other trait, and ESPECIALLY with organized.

Admittedly if you are good you will have a nice gold stockpile (which may be the reason you find yourself at war...) and so you can run at a deficit for a while. But organized gives nicer flexibility.

Financial is of course awesome (less so if non-coastal and no rivers, but still good). But while organized might not be the single #1 trait in every game, it is extremely useful in EVERY game.