Commerce vs Gold: time to beat this horse again

[dennisg]

OK, I keep confusing myself between the two and have searched the forums to some avail, but not much. Can somebody please clear up the difference?

For example, the Financial trait says "+1 commerce on tiles with at least 2 commerce", but obviously a tile yields "gold" not commerce...right?

And what about a Harbor that gives "+50% commerce from Trade Routes"...does this mean +50% of the gold I'm already making from my trade routes?

etc etc etc

Arggh!

Can one safely use the terms "Gold" and "Commerce" interchangeably?

thanks again!

 

[Gorey]

1st things 1st.. gotta get to know the difference between the icons:

<- this is commerce

and

<- this is gold

while it might not seem like a big deal at first glance, it trips up alot of new people. when you see those icons in pop-ups inside the UI... they are not the same.


is generated by tiles and trade routes etc. Each city will generate a certain amount of which gets put through your research slider (on a per city basis).


the best way to explain how things really work is through example.

New Orleans (where im from ) generates 50 commerce. You have your slider set at 50% , 0% , and 0% . This in effect means that the remaining 50% will go to creating which is used for paying for your city maintenance and units.

50% of 50 = 25 going to and 25 going to .

any scientist or merchant specialists you have in this city will add their +bonus to those two 25's. you now have your base and base values for this city. these base values then get multiplied by any buildings you have that have % modifiers.

a library will take your base and add another 35 percent ontop of it.
a bank will take your base and add another 50 percent ontop of it.


the thing to remember is this...

your gold creation relates entirely to where you research slider is set. if all three , , and sliders combined = 100%... you aren't generating any from your (such as a combined setting of 70% , 10% , and 20% ).

since you're going to be running high science rates for most of the game, to get any good use out of your gold multiplying buildings... you're going to need to find a way to get gold directly instead of through your . that is done through religious shrines, corporations, merchant specialists and what have you. Pile all these up in one city and build all the multiplying buildings you can in this city. such as banks, markets, grocers, wall street etc. most great merchants you pop will be settled here as well. if you do this really well... you can have your research slider at 100% and still turn a profit in alot of cases.


my last monarch game, my wall street city was generating over 300 per turn with my research set to 100% . this one city paid for all of my expenses. all other cities focused on science or production.

i did this by having a religion founded there with a holy shrine. made sure to spread that religion around for the direct gold. used lots of farms to run as many merchant specialists as i could (at times i had 10 of them) and then settled any great merchants i popped. built all multiplying buildings.. including Wall Street. And then later had two corporation HQ's stationed in that city. the city didn't generaate a whole lot of , but it didn't need to. it was generating the directly in this city.

 

[Gorey]

for your question about the harbor it breaks down like this:


say your city generates 30 from its tiles..

and its geting another 10 from trade routes.


30+10 = base of 40.

if you add a harbor, you'll get a +50% to your trade routes. 10 + 5 = 15;

so your base would be 30 + 15 = 45 .

that 45 will then get poritioned out according to your slider.. and then be modified by specialists & buildings in the normal ways. (note: some civics will have modifiers as well).

 

[Windsor]

..........

 

[dannythefool]

Previewing this, I see some other people have already replied. But anyway:

OK, I keep confusing myself between the two and have searched the forums to some avail, but not much. Can somebody please clear up the difference?

Commerce is something that you acquire by working a tile, just like food and hammers. The commerce is then divided up between research, culture, espionage and gold income according to your sliders. After that, it goes through modifier buildings.

Example:

Your capital is on a 1c tile (one commerce). You are also working a 7c tile (e.g. a town). In addition, you get 8c from your palace, and you have a trade route with your other city that contributes another 1c. This makes your base commerce 17c, this is the amount of commerce your capital produces.

Now you set your slider to 50% research. This means those 17c are divided up between research and gold income. 50% of 17c is 8.5, and that will be the research output of this city with this slider setting. Now you add an observatory. The observatory is a research multiplier and applies to the 8.5 number. The observatory adds 25%, so your capital's research output is now 10.62 beakers per turn.

The other half goes to gold income, so you also have 8.5 gold per turn from this city. If you build a bank, which is a gold multiplier, 50% of that are added to the sum, and you get 12.75 gold per turn instead. But the bank does not multiply commerce, it multiplies gold, so it has no effect on your research output.

For example, the Financial trait says "+1 commerce on tiles with at least 2 commerce", but obviously a tile yields "gold" not commerce...right?

Tiles yield commerce. If you're financial, certain tiles yield more commerce. This extra commerce then contributes to your city's base commerce, and goes through the above calculations.

And what about a Harbor that gives "+50% commerce from Trade Routes"...does this mean +50% of the gold I'm already making from my trade routes?

In our example, we get one commerce from the trade route. Actually, we have a bonus of 25% due to connection to the capital, but this is rounded down, so we still only have one commerce. If we build a harbour, we get a bonus of 75%, i.e. 0.75 commerce, which is unfortunately still rounded down. So for the sake of the explanation, let's build the Temple of Artemis, adding another 100% until Scientific Method. Now we have a total bonus of 175%, that is we get 2.75 commerce from trade routes, which is rounded down to 2 commerce. And those 2 commerce go through the above calculation as part of your base commerce.

The rounding is only a big problem when applied to small numbers. So the more commerce you get from trade routes, the closer you will actually be to 50% more gold from trade routes. But if you have your slider set to 0% gold, you will obviously not get any gold at all.


To complicate this, you can make gold in other ways than from commerce via your slider, e.g. by running specialists that generate gold, or by having a shrined holy city. Both of these will go through your gold modifier buildings without affecting commerce in any way. This means you can't use these to generate research, like you can from commerce.


To complicate this even further: Now imagine you also have a hammer output of 10 hammers per turn. You set your city to build research. This will add another 10 bpt of research to your city. This research does NOT go through research modifier buildings such as your observatory. The same applies to building wealth. If you set your city to build wealth, you will have 10 gpt extra that do NOT go through your bank.

Can one safely use the terms "Gold" and "Commerce" interchangeably?

No, especially not on these forums. That could be dangerous

 

[dennisg]

Thanks for all the info, I think I have it finally straightened out

No, especially not on these forums. That could be dangerous

That's why I asked first

 

[Gorey]

you're welcome.

when i finally wrapped my head around this same problem you were having i made an almost immediate jump in 2 difficulty levels (from Noble to Monarch).

i realized the importance of specializing. .ie A bank in a city that doesn't generate gold will give me hardly anything in return if my science rate is at 80%-100%.

(dont forget though, you need a certain amount of banks in your empire to build Wall-Street).

 

[dennisg]

Actually I'm just about to go from Prince to Monarch. Pretty much whooping arse on Prince (Except with a few setbacks because of my normal stupidity and laziness )

 

[OldFartAtPlay]

... thanks for a really excellent, clear explanation.

Appreciated!

 

[mrwookie]

Does this mean that in a gold city we should set its slider to 0% to benefit from that city completly?

I know about binary research, is this explaining the binary research method?

 

[Gorey]

you cant adjust each city's slider seperately.

although you can see a slider inside the city's special screen... it's not owned by the city. adjusting it changes the main one, and hence changes all cities.

 

[Malchar]

Things that you get from terrain:
Food
Hammer
Commerce

Things that you can make from commerce:
Science
Gold
Culture
Espionage

 

[Badtz Maru]

Does this mean that in a gold city we should set its slider to 0% to benefit from that city completly?

I know about binary research, is this explaining the binary research method?

I don't believe you can set gold sliders independently per city, so if you do that you'll be taking all commerce out of research across your civ.

 

[mrwookie]

So as I understand a wall street city gets real use when
1- your running at 0% and then going back because the gold is multiply and then consume to make science.
2- in a city wich produce pure gold ( aka holy shrine / corp ).

 

[Gorey]

#2 is right on. but dont forget about merchant specialists. they will account for a big portion of the cities gold as well.

#1 is a bit iffy.

generally my wall street city is abit light on commerce during Caste System (it's mostly farms and merchants). so running 0% wont be generating a whole lot more gold in this city because there isn't much commerce. the gold generated from running 0% will be coming mostly from all my cottage rich science cities.

i only drop to 0% if i need alot of cash quick for upgrades or to rush something, and its only for a very short time.

 

[dannythefool]

Does this mean that in a gold city we should set its slider to 0% to benefit from that city completly?

You can't do that per-city. Otherwise, I guess you'd do that...

I know about binary research, is this explaining the binary research method?

No. Binary research has one main benefit: You get to exploit a newly acquired modifier building more thoroughly. During the game, you typically have situations where you gradually build up modifiers over time. For example, when universities become available, you start building universities, and when banks become available, you start building banks.

But this means that as you are starting on universities, you know that in a few turns, you will have much more science multipliers in all your cities combined. For example, let's say you make 100 commerce per turn. You have no science or gold multipliers and you're running at 50% research, which is your break-even point. In 50 turns, you make 2500 beakers, and 2500 gold with which you pay your expenses (i.e. assuming that nothing is left and 50% is exactly the break-even point).

Now pretend that you started to build a university that will come online after 25 turns. From that point onward, you will have a +25% modifier on research, so starting with turn 26, you will make 25% more beakers from your 100 commerce per turn. During the first 25 turns you will make 1250 beakers, and during the last 25 turns you will make 1562.5 beakers, for a total of 2812.5 beakers. During the entire time, you will make 2500 gold with which you pay your expenses (i.e. again ending up with 0 extra gold at the end).

Now pretend that, knowing that you had 25 turns to your university, you turned off your slider before the first of these 50 turns. During the first 25 turns, you will make NO beakers, because research is turned off. You will, however, make 2500 gold, of which you only need half to pay your expenses. On turn 26, you turn your slider up to 100% research. Since the university is now online, you have the +25% modifier for the last 25 turns. Since the slider is at 100% and not on 50% as in the previous example, you will make 100 * 100% (slider) * 125% (university bonus) beakers per turn, which works out to a total of 3125 beakers. During this time you will also lose gold, because you have to pay your expenses from your savings. However, this is a simplified example and we're assuming that your expenses don't change during these 50 turns. In other words, you will pay the 1250 gold in expenses that you saved up during the first 25 turns.

In the end, over the course of 50 turns, you have the choice between 2812.5 beakers/0 gold from running at 50% science the whole time, or 3125 beakers/0 gold from binary research.

There is another aspect, which is that CIV rounds down in many places, so in some cases it makes sense to aim for high numbers, or zero, instead of anything in between. But as far as I can see, the effect from applying this technique to newly unlocked multipliers far outweighs the effects from rounding.

 

[mrwookie]

what about #1, is what im saying true?
wich would mean that binary research would make get me even more benefit when having a wallstreet city, because the gold produced would be multplied by the gold builkding ( bank , grocer, market...) and then multiply by the science building ( libray, university, oxford uniersity....).
or the multiplaction is made once?

 

[dannythefool]

what about #1, is what im saying true?
wich would mean that binary research would make get me even more benefit when having a wallstreet city, because the gold produced would be multplied by the gold builkding ( bank , grocer, market...) and then multiply by the science building ( libray, university, oxford uniersity....).
or the multiplaction is made once?

It is only made once, when commerce is translated to beakers, or to gold.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Wall Street is a gold multiplier, like banks and all the others, so it only affects gold. Research is not affected. But you can use binary research around the time when you build it to earn a little more gold than you otherwise would.

Assume you make 100 commerce per turn, you're at turn 1, at turn 26 you have Wall Street online, and at the end of turn 50, we compare the results. Oh, and you still only have one city ;-)

If you run 50% all the time, you make 100 * 50% * 50 turns = 2500 beakers during those 50 turns. You also make 100 * 50% * 25 turns = 1250 gold during the first 25 turns and 100 * 50% * 200% (from Wall Street) * 25 turns = 2500 gold during the last 25 turns, for a total of 3750 gold.

If you run 100% during the first 25 turns and 0% during the last 25 turns, you make 100 * 100% * 25 turns = 2500 beakers during the first 25 turns and zero beakers during the last, for a total of 2500 beakers. You also make zero gold during the first 25 turns, but 100 * 100 % * 200% (from Wall Street) * 25 turns = 5000 gold during the last 25 turns, for a total of 5000 gold in 50 turns.

So binary research in this case nets you 1250 extra gold, but research remains unchanged. However, while you don't get any extra research during those 50 turns, you can of course use the extra gold to run at 100% for a little longer!

 

[Malchar]

what about #1, is what im saying true?
wich would mean that binary research would make get me even more benefit when having a wallstreet city, because the gold produced would be multplied by the gold builkding ( bank , grocer, market...) and then multiply by the science building ( libray, university, oxford uniersity....).
or the multiplaction is made once?

It depends on what your multipliers are and how much gold and beakers you have. You could do some quick calculations while you're playing to figure out what you should do.

 

[mrwookie]

Ok my question will be more clear now. and I think I understand better, the gold in treasury wich I got when I ran at 0%. will this gold had the library or whatever science multplier be applied if I start running at 100% science now?