Padmewan said:
2. COMMERCE creates GOLD and SCIENCE? (Though as above, gold and science can come from other sources).
Commerce is what comes from the tiles your city works, and your city's trade routes. It works the same way as food and hammers. If you see a little "gold" coin on the city map (the icon is what makes it confusing), that's commerce. To start, let's just ignore direct gold sources, such as specialists and holy shrines and I'll get to those later.
So, you put your citizens to work on some tiles and pick up food, commerce and hammers. For this example, let's say your city has a total of 20 commerce.
The next thing that happens is that your research slider settings are applied to your total commerce.
If your research slider is at 80%, your city will be generating....
16 Beakers (80% of 20 commerce)
4 Gold (20% of 20 commerce)
Next, those beakers and gold go through your markets, libraries etc. A market adds 25% (I think, if I'm wrong on the %, just go with it anyway).
Now, let's say your city that is generating 4 gold has a market. A market will add 25% of 4 gold, which is 1 more gold. Your city's total gold output is now 5 gold.
Now to answer your next question, and deal with direct gold sources.
An adjunct question: when you have your research slider at 100%, how can you ever be generating a profit (or even breaking even) if ALL of your money is going towards science? What's the leftover coming from?
100% research means all of your
commerceis going toward science. You will still get the gold that is not generated from from commerce. Direct Gold sources are holy shrines and specialists (I think that's all, but don't quote me on that). These are never affected by your slider.
As I explained above, Markets, Banks, etc. increase your gold (not commerce) output. If you have your slider at 100% research, they will do nothing for you, unless your city has some direct gold sources.
Let's take the Merchant specialist. A merchant adds 3 gold (might be wrong on exact value, but that doesn't change the point). The slider is irrelevant to this 3 gold. If it's at 0% or 100%, you still get 3 gold.
A Holy Shrine. The amount of gold you get is equal to the total number of cities that also have that religion.
So, to continue with the example above...
Your city has 20 commerce, 1 merchant, and a buddhist holy shrine giving 9 gold from other buddhist cities. It also has a market, and your slider is at 80%.
The raw gold your city is generating is as follows:
Commerce x 20% = 4 gold
Merchant = 3 gold
Shrine = 9 gold
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Total = 16 gold
Now we apply the 25% from the market, adding an additional 4 gold.
The result is that your city is generating a total of 20 gold.