Banks and Printing Press

[Bierp]

Ok, I'm getting a better handle on the differences between commerce and gold. But explain this one to me.

The city summary screen (F1) shows a ton of useful information. Population, something else that looks like a torso (what is this?), happies, unhappies, healthies, unhealthies, food produced, food eaten, hammers, commerce, beakers, culture per turn, total culture, GPP per turn, total GPP and current production.

...why doesn't it show gold?

Considering the specialization stuff for wall street, banks and whatnot, it seems like this is a pretty big miss on an important screen.

B

 

[ekanata]

After thinking about this thread, I conclude that I've way over-prioritized building of Banks and to a lesser extent Markets. Other than the Happiness benefits of the latter, it seems as though it would be a rare city that can effectively utilize these buildings. (I rarely, if ever, opt for Priest or Merchant specialists. I never try to build the Spiral Minaret and have never sought it out for capture.)

It depends on your ecomonic slider required to maintain your empire's economy. If it require 60% commerce turned into gold to have a balanced budget, then by building bank in your cities (assuming they don't already have market/grocer), you will still have a balanced budget at 40% gold slider, thus effectively increasing science by 50% (40% to 60% assuming culture at 0%). Well, the real numbers could be a little different, but I hope you get my point.

 

[bassist2119]

After thinking about this thread, I conclude that I've way over-prioritized building of Banks and to a lesser extent Markets. Other than the Happiness benefits of the latter, it seems as though it would be a rare city that can effectively utilize these buildings. (I rarely, if ever, opt for Priest or Merchant specialists. I never try to build the Spiral Minaret and have never sought it out for capture.)

In contrast, the Grocer seems to work the way I erroneously thought the other two buildings work, that is, it improves Commerce. Seems more generally useful, especially in conjunction with its Health benefits.

Is the above a correct analysis, or am I still missing something?

Nonononono!!! Banks/grocers/markets are an absolutely essential ingredient to the empire expansion recipe; particularly regarding expansion through conquest where you'll be tempted to add a few high pop cities in quick succession. I'd rate their importance in this regard equal to that of a superior military unit to be conquering with!
Unless you have acquired a couple of shrines along with Spiral Minaret and a state religion that has been spammed across multiple civilizations, you're eventually going to NEED to drop the Rslider below 100%(Also note that it's even more effective to have banks/etc. if you DO have spiral/shrines/etc.). If banks/grocers/markets are already in high commerce cities, you'll rarely need to suffer much of a dunce-research era unless you overexpand, I rarely need to drop below 80% (on Monarch diff) even during wartime acquisition.
Think of it this way: the more banks/etc. you have in decent+ commerce cities, the larger the empire you can afford... And the ability to afford large empires wins games.

 

[bassist2119]

BTW - don't downplay Printing Press with a cottage economy either - It does have a minor effect on commerce - each drop in the research slider will produce heavier monetary gains. But more importantly, it is an instantaneous leap forward in research. PP becomes available at the same time as Education - universities have to be built, the printing press jump happens the moment you acquire PP (and then, of course, the already increased yields add a multiplier with Unis...Juicy!

 

[JoeBlade]

The city summary screen (F1) shows a ton of useful information. Population, something else that looks like a torso (what is this?), happies, unhappies, healthies, unhealthies, food produced, food eaten, hammers, commerce, beakers, culture per turn, total culture, GPP per turn, total GPP and current production.

...why doesn't it show gold?

Considering the specialization stuff for wall street, banks and whatnot, it seems like this is a pretty big miss on an important screen.

Good question, one that I've asked a few weeks ago in the general forum myself.

I suspect base commerce is being shown because that value is otherwise difficult to see (it is only displayed when hovering over the income section in city screens) That's just my guess though; only Firaxis can answer that for sure.

Unfortunately, base commerce has very little information value. Gold would indeed have been a far better choice.

Perhaps there's a mod out there to change this display?

 

[Hans Lemurson]

Ok, I'm getting a better handle on the differences between commerce and gold. But explain this one to me.

The city summary screen (F1) shows a ton of useful information. Population, something else that looks like a torso (what is this?), happies, unhappies, healthies, unhealthies, food produced, food eaten, hammers, commerce, beakers, culture per turn, total culture, GPP per turn, total GPP and current production.

...why doesn't it show gold?

Upper left-hand corner. It shows the total , and output of your city, as well as a control to change your science% and culture%.

 

[The Lardossen]

Running at 100% shows you how much money you lose when you are not generating income from tiles commerce. The amount of money you lose is only affected by building courthouses, using GP in cities that generate gold or trading. The rest is up to city and army maintenance, plus the inflation cost.

 

[cabert]

Running at 100% shows you how much money you lose when you are not generating income from tiles commerce. The amount of money you lose is only affected by building courthouses, using GP in cities that generate gold or trading. The rest is up to city and army maintenance, plus the inflation cost.

trades with your vassals are huge money makers (warlords only).
+ you don't want them to research, since they don't trade their techs with you.

 

[drkodos]

If you limit the expansion of your empire to what your shrine can support at 100% research, and I expand and keep expanding so that my breakeven for the same shrine is at 60% research, I will almost always be producing more beakers per turn than you, and thus researching faster. They will be points when I'm not, like if I've recently added a lot of new cities that lack infrastructure and developed cottages, but in the long run the 60% empire will be producing more research per turn than the 100% empire.

While I agree that if you take the exact same empire and set the slider at 100% then you'll produce more research than at 60%, that's kind of a silly point to even bring up.

Agreed.

But I never LIMIT my expansion for that reason. My main point was that if possible I keep my slider at 100% for as long as I can and I do not worry about generating cash with the slider. There are other ways to generate revenue and keep the slider at 100 without limiting expansion at all.

~ Heavy pillaging.
~ Teching to currency early to trade for cash.

All that being said, money is undervalued in the game, and there is very little to do with it until one is able to cash rush buildings and units.

If my science can run at 40% or above, I expand. For me, it's all about working the most tiles.

 

[Bierp]

Upper left-hand corner. It shows the total , and output of your city, as well as a control to change your science% and culture%.

Of course I understand that, my point is that you have this lovely summary screen that seems to be leaving out a key piece of information.

When you're running a high number of cities, it's much nicer to look at this summary screen that to hop between 10 or more city screens. If you've taken the time to show science and culture on the summary, why not gold?

/shrug. I run at 1920x1200 resolution. It's possible that this was limited for smaller reso's?

I would like an explanation of that 2nd column though. The torso. What is that? (when I looked at this page prior to my post they were all 0's, making it hard to deduce.)

B

 

[carl corey]

It's the number of angry citizens. They're all 0 since none of your cities have exceeded their happiness limit. It's the same as happy-angry faces (well, opposite sign), but I like it since it allows me to immediately see if the war weariness gets out of hand anywhere.

 

[Pantastic]

But I never LIMIT my expansion for that reason. My main point was that if possible I keep my slider at 100% for as long as I can and I do not worry about generating cash with the slider. There are other ways to generate revenue and keep the slider at 100 without limiting expansion at all.

Right, that's not what I'm talking about. I've seen a lot of people new to the game who think that it's best to build an economy by getting a shrine, then limiting expansion so that their shrine lets them stay at 100% research for the game. They'll then say "I managed my cities carefully and stayed at 100% research for the game, why are the other empires outresearching me". If you do that, you can't even take advantage of cash from pillaging and trading since your research is already so high.

I'm a big fan of researching alphabet and currency early on, trading minor techs for lots of cash, then staying at 100% research until the gravy train runs out sometime in the middle ages or reinassance, I certainly don't disagree with running at 100% research by using extra cash.

 

[Xerol]

The key point is that even if you have to drop the slider, you'll still be researching MORE in some cases. Suppose (in this extremely oversimplified example) you have a single city with 10 fully developed towns, no rivers, no financial trait. That's 50 base commerce + 2 from city square + 8 from palace = 60 base commerce. If you're running 100% science, that's 60 beakers.

Now assume you get printing press. That's 10 extra commerce, for a total of 70. Suppose also that you've been having expenses that have drained your gold reserves, so you have to drop the slider by 10%. So now you're running 90% science, and 90% of 70 = 63 beakers. So while the SLIDER is lower, the overall research rate is HIGHER, and that's the key.

 

[pigswill]

Forget research slider - its irrelevant. Its the total number of beakers produced per turn that determines research rate.
For instance you could have 6 cities producing 50 commerce at 100% research giving you 300 beakers per turn. You could have 10 cities producing 50 commerce at 80% research giving you 400 beakers and 100 gold per turn. 400 beakers is higher than 300 beakers though 80% is lower than 100%.

 

[Bierp]

It's the number of angry citizens. They're all 0 since none of your cities have exceeded their happiness limit. It's the same as happy-angry faces (well, opposite sign), but I like it since it allows me to immediately see if the war weariness gets out of hand anywhere.

That makes sense.

Thanks.
B