Financial vs. Organized

Which is better, as far as creating or saving the most money. From the info center...

Financial +1 commerce on plots with 2 commerce.
Organized Civic upkeep reduced 50 percent.
Double production speed of Lighthouse and Courthouse.

Obviously the answer always "depends" on something, but I'm not sure how often I get a city tile with exactly 2 commerce. Should Financial read "2 or more"? Water tiles can often be exactly 2 gold, but mines and the cottages series of improvements often generate much more than two gold icons on a workable tile.

For now I'd figure that Organized would be better, 1 because it specifically helps facilitate large spread out empires and gives a building bonus of some kind.

what are your thoughts?

mechadamuramu,

Welcome to CivFanatics!

'Yes' ... it should read "2 or more" or something along those lines. I made that misunderstanding for a while myself in the early days.

b.t.w., Commerce creates the opportunity for Gold, Culture, Espionage, or Science ... Gold is different from Commerce.

For just one of several threads on this; It's All About The Numbaz: Financial vs Organized started by DarkSchneider.

Something I didn't see mentioned in the other thread is that civic upkeep scales upwards with difficulty level, so organised becomes more beneficial at Emporer and Immortal.

Welcome to the forums.

I am in the minority, but I have always felt that Organized is a stronger trait. early courthouses and lighthouses. The 50% civic upkeep let's you a vast empire without crippling the economy. This allows you to avoid State Property and thus allows you to generate quite a few corps, which if you have a large empire from lower upkeep because of organized means you have more of the corp resources which means you can grow you cities higher in population, thus running more merchants which let's you run the science slider higher, which speeds up research moreso than financial will. Oh, and then there are the productions corps!

Again, for some reason I am in the majority.

Now, I suggest you follow this thread ebcause I am sure there will be an endless argument back and forth. Before you know it someone will pipe in that Philosophiocal is better than both.

So prepare yourself for alot of information and posts that will likely confuse the hell out of you.

Oh yeah, commerce is different from gold. Gold goes right to your upkeep or treasury, it pays the bills. Commerce allows you to adjust the slider to favor science/culture/gold/espionage. The higher the science slider the better you tech.

Philosophical is better than either Financial or Organized. Because MadScientist said I should say so.

Okay, seriously. It depends on the circumstances.

Typically I think Financial is better early game. It can shine by taking 2 commerce tiles and increasing their commerce by 50%. Late game it's value is still there, but +1 commerce to a high-commerce town isn't as big a deal as to a two commerce tile relatively speaking.

Late game I think Organized may have the nod. Maintenance costs can get very high in big empires with high population cities. In that circumstance I can easily see a few expensive civic choices resulting in Organized giving substantial savings. The cheap courthouses and lighthouses are just gravy.

Personally? I prefer Financial. I like the early game, I get bored soon after. playerType ( me <= ADD )

-abs

The problem with Organized, is it doesn't really help with city upkeep, just civics.

That's why I prefer Financial. Organized can give you some good savings on expensive civics if you have a big civ. But that implies late-game. I prefer early-game advantage, give me enough early-game levers and the game is won.

The cheap courthouses and lighthouses just don't add up to enough to overcome the early-game advantage Financial has compared to Organized.

-abs

obsolete said:

The problem with Organized, is it doesn't really help with city upkeep, just civics.

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It does by giving half price courthouses. It gives you lower city upkeep quicker than other traits.

The little speed difference for half price courthouses just doesn't compare to losing a solid leader trait for it.

Just one turn of anarchy already kills this bonus many times over.

I was involved in a succession game here, where we were never allowed to change civics the entire game. We played on Immortal level. When picking leaders, most players agreed that an organised leader would be the best (ended up with Toko agg/org in Vanilla).

At the end of this post, one of the guys decided to analyse if organised was worth it. We were in the late 1500s and saving 53 gold from being organised, even though we had adopted no civics. At 50% research which we were at, that would mean we would have had to have 106 tiles of 2 or more commerce to get a similar saving from financial, which we didn't by a long shot. If we actually had adopted expensive civics (which most people would have) we would have needed more tiles.

So, for me, that shows the value of organised at Monarch level and above.

Ozbenno said:

At 50% research which we were at, that would mean we would have had to have 106 tiles of 2 or more commerce to get a similar saving from financial, which we didn't by a long shot.

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That seems like a very strange way to do the calculation.

Heh yeah.. maybe he didn't have any multipliers at all?

Let's also forget the cummulative nature of having more commerce earlier that will give increased benefit the longer a game lasts..

VoiceOfUnreason said:

That seems like a very strange way to do the calculation.

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It is simplifying the calcs I admit as it ignores the extra beakers but the point was to be +53gpt at 50% research, you'd need 106 extra commerce tiles, you'd also have 53 extra base beakers/turn as well (not a great improvement when your researching a 2500 beaker tech).

obsolete said:

The little speed difference for half price courthouses just doesn't compare to losing a solid leader trait for it.

Just one turn of anarchy already kills this bonus many times over.

Click to expand...

It makes a big difference, and it's great for warmongering. Why? Any city of size 4 or higher can instantly get a courthouse. That means those rioting unhappy cities racking up 8-12 maintenance in freshly conquered enemy lands can (usually) instantly get a courthouse, rather than drag along with little hope of ever decreasing the maintenance any time soon.

Ozbenno said:

It is simplifying the calcs I admit as it ignores the extra beakers but the point was to be +53gpt at 50% research, you'd need 106 extra commerce tiles, you'd also have 53 extra base beakers/turn as well (not a great improvement when your researching a 2500 beaker tech).

Click to expand...

The problem is, the calculation completely ignores multipliers, which in the later stages of a game usually are significant.

I did some calculations on my latest game.

Some details:

Standard, Hemispheres map with 4 smaller continents, one in each corner of the map. I play a financial civ and have 15 cities on one of these four continents and some islands surrounding it, with an approximate population of 48 million, on average each city is size 15,8 with ranges from 3-25.
The year is 1776 and I just switched civics to emancipation and universal suffrage..no jk, I'm researching plastics and going for a space race win. Being on epic speed that is turn 398/750.
I don't know if difficulty matters but it's emperor.

My results:

My cities are currently working a total of 112 commerce-boosted tiles. (obviously I'm running a CE.. I have one GP farm).
With the commerce bonuses and multipliers calculated individually for each city I get 207,5 gpt with slider at 100% economy or 195,5 beakers at 100% science, so about 200 for each direction. at 50/50 that would be a 100 gold and a 100 beakers.

Loking at my civics, I'm running US, FS, EM, FM, OR for a total cost of 158 gold. So organized would have saved me 79 gold here.
If I had access to all civics and ran all the most expensive ones, I would have had a civic cost of 199 gold, where organized would have saved me a 100 gold.

So, about 200 gold or 200 beakers or a 100 gold and a 100 beakers vs about 80 gold, potentially but not realistically a 100.

That of course is not calculating the benefit of extra commerce I could potentially have from turn 1 of the game where organized would have done nothing. Neither does it account for the benefits of getting techs researched earlier, larger armies being fielded, and the benefits that these things generate which translates to more benefit and more benefit etc all through the game.
It doesn't account for half-priced courthouses lighthouses and factories either of course, and it's very possible that the comparison is more beneficial for the organized trait in the midgame than at any other point, but I think you can see why financial gets my vote.

But to each his own, I wont claim that this is true for all players, part of it of course has to do with how you play etc, but for me it's an easy choice.

Forget philosophical, Charismatic > both

Gliese already covered why financial > organized.

Working 2 extra cottages > having each cottage produce 1 more commerce. Or if you don't find yourself in need of that extra commerce, you can work an extra farm + an extra mine. Then there's the faster promotions, which financial, organized, and philosophical all lack an equivalent to.

Monkeyfinger said:

Forget philosophical, Charismatic > both

Gliese already covered why financial > organized.

Working 2 extra cottages > having each cottage produce 1 more commerce. Or if you don't find yourself in need of that extra commerce, you can work an extra farm + an extra mine. Then there's the faster promotions, which financial, organized, and philosophical all lack an equivalent to.

Click to expand...

Yeah it's a safe bet I'm going to play Hannibal when I try my first immortal game.

Although..if Liz is reading this, I love you too.

Which is the better of the two traits: Financial or Organised? I would be likened to perhaps a little phrase by Darius I. If you can't beat one, join them!
Seriously though, my vote would go to Financial for a longer term gain.

Financial is clearly superior if you're running a cottage economy and you're planning on some long game (late game domination, cultural or space).

If you're warmongering heavily and early, you will run some high cost civics + run a specialist economy to overcome the unhappiness by using the cultural slider. Organized is better there because of the cheap buildings (courthouses are a must, and in conquered coastal cities you really want a lighthouse soon)

cabert said:

Financial is clearly superior if you're running a cottage economy and you're planning on some long game (late game domination, cultural or space).

If you're warmongering heavily and early, you will run some high cost civics + run a specialist economy to overcome the unhappiness by using the cultural slider. Organized is better there because of the cheap buildings (courthouses are a must, and in conquered coastal cities you really want a lighthouse soon)

Click to expand...

Exactly, I was thinking the same when reading trough this thread. If you plan to have more prod cities over com cities and go for warmongering. Org will probably give you a better deal afterall.
Same goes for playing SE games. Lots of farms = few cottages, org>fin.

So as the OP implied .. "it depends". >_>