AI commerce / costs bonuses ?

[lorn]

Hello,

I read the interesting article from Robi_D about demographic screen, and something is bothering me about capacity of AI to get high GNP (meaning, as explained in the article, commerce - costs), without a strong commerce strategy.
In my last game for instance, on prince level, I play Catherine, and have a much better land and much more worked cottages/towns that the challenger in score, Cyrus (creative/expansive).
On the demographics screen, I am placed in 2nd position a good 20% behind the leader, that I suppose to be Cyrus (we are the two "GNP" leaders on the GNP graph -which seems to show different results than the raw data-, and because other players are very far behind)
My GNP score is accurate, I checked it. So I wonder how Cyrus is able to achieve such a high GNP.
I see here the following possibilities :
1) Cyrus beats me on commerce from tiles : i wonder how, as I have much more developed towns (at least 3 times more) and I work them, and most of my land is much better
2) he beats me on commerce between towns : hard to believe (i have more coastal cities and I have free market, and he's running decentralization)
3) he beats me on costs : i checked his civics and units, we are about the same (except free market), any difference wouldn't explain such results.
4) AI gets commerce or cost reduction bonus on prince level that are more than significant ?
5) or there is something else that I don't get !!

Thank you a lot for your answers

Lorn

 

[atreas]

I copied the following from the article:

"Your raw commerce is the gold coins you get from all your worked tiles, the palace, specialists and trade routes. "

The secret key word is "specialists" - you play a cottage strategy but Cyrus isn't; at the first and middle stages of the game the specialists strategy outguns cottage strategy in GNP, and you will overcome him only after Villages (or maybe even Towns, if Cyrus has the Pyramids).

For the same reason "land is power" - if Cyrus has more cities, then with farms+specialists he may be better in GNP even with a "worse" (from your point of view) land.

And yes, the graph and the numbers aren't the same.

PS. A question just to verify my own observations: is Cyrus doing faster research than you at the moment?

 

[lorn]

well, as i just mentioned in the same article, GNP doesn't include any specialist income, as they don't bring commerce but beakers/gold.

cyrus is quite behind in tech (2 major techs behind me : astronomy and printing press) as he didn't make as much improvement as me in his cities.

 

[atreas]

I checked it using WorldBuilder - definitely specialists are out (maybe a change in the article should be made). This makes numbers uncomparable, of course, and so you can get no clue with GNP at the late phases - and judging by the techs you say, at that moment of the game usually infrastructure differences tell much more than GNP itself. I usually consult GNP regularly until quite earlier (something like Civil Services looks OK for comparable data).

Still, in your case I can't think of an explanation at all. Prince level shouldn't give so big a difference in civic costs. But you can do a small experiment with WorldBuilder:

1. Plant spies in all Cyrus cities, to see the total commerce of his cities.
2. Deduce this number from GNP, so as to see what is the cost.

I would be very interested to learn the result.

 

[lorn]

very good idea, i check that out, i will tell you the results tomorrow