Energy to everything else conversion rate

[Minor Annoyance]

I'm wondering about the comparitive value of yields. I asked this one before but I posted in the wrong place and it wasn't noticed. I asked the mods to delete it but even they didn't notice it existed.

I found two posts where people had thoughts on the value of each yield.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=538077
This one was before the patch and he commented that health is often worthless, which is not true now.

1 ≈ 3
1 ≈ 3
1 ≈ 3
1 ≈ 1.5
1 health ≈ 2

Another one, here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13606913#post13606913
...had these numbers

+2 Prod = +2 Science = +3 Food (+1 surplus actually, food is wierd) = +1 culture = +4 energy

Obviously the most valuable yield is whichever one you are lacking, but then again if the manufactory gave you 1 production for 2 energy and 2 unhealth you'd probably never build one even if you needed production. Same if the academy cost 20 energy.

There's a lot of factors that can change this but when people say they spam generators, academies, and biowells but never say they spam Terrascape, domes, or arrays so there must be some cost-benefit thought going on there. Some are good enough to use anytime without much worry about if it is worth it and some are situational.

Does anyone have thoughts on the comparative value of yields?

 

[Mutineer]

Terrascape simply not good idea to build on ties with good yield. it is simple because they replace tie . At the end of game you usually do not have money problem too spamm terrascapes if situation demand so.

 

[heat]

Terrascape simply not good idea to build on ties with good yield. it is simple because they replace tie . At the end of game you usually do not have money problem too spamm terrascapes if situation demand so.

100% agreed with.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

OK. Terrascapes give 2 food, 2 production, 2 culture for -6 energy. A good tile might be a riverside grassland giving 2 food, 1 energy which gets replaced and thus would be subtracted from the value of the terrascape. You're saying it's not worth the cost so that means:

7 energy > 2 production + 2 culture.
Which means:
3.5e > 1p + 1c
However does that mean:
1.75e >1p
1.75e >1c
and does that mean:
1.5e =1p
1.5e =1c
Or would it be divided differently? And at what point would it be equal?

See, that's what I'm looking for. Numbers for yields comparing the value. And I do know that if energy is effectively unlimited then it has no value so any exchange is likely valuable, however I'm more looking at situation where you still have need of everything so everything still has value. What's a fair exchange then?

 

[Mutineer]

OK. Terrascapes give 2 food, 2 production, 2 culture for -6 energy. A good tile might be a riverside grassland giving 2 food, 1 energy which gets replaced and thus would be subtracted from the value of the terrascape. You're saying it's not worth the cost so that means:

7 energy > 2 production + 2 culture.
Which means:
3.5e > 1p + 1c
However does that mean:
1.75e >1p
1.75e >1c
and does that mean:
1.5e =1p
1.5e =1c
Or would it be divided differently? And at what point would it be equal?

See, that's what I'm looking for. Numbers for yields comparing the value. And I do know that if energy is effectively unlimited then it has no value so any exchange is likely valuable, however I'm more looking at situation where you still have need of everything so everything still has value. What's a fair exchange then?

But that is incorrect, you take in account only inherited value or tie, not other "free" potential improvement. For example you can have +2 food farm.
So in reality you replacing 4 food 1 energy tie with 2 food 2 production 2 culture - 6 energy. late in game basic improvements become very good.

It is difficult to put value on situation improvements like terrascapes. Building a few in new city in order for it to grow expand border and have production at same time very good idea, even if other cities pay for that. on other hand building terrascapas in big cities does not seems a good idea.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

But that is incorrect, you take in account only inherited value or tie, not other "free" potential improvement. For example you can have +2 food farm.
So in reality you replacing 4 food 1 energy tie with 2 food 2 production 2 culture - 6 energy. late in game basic improvements become very good.

It is difficult to put value on situation improvements like terrascapes. Building a few in new city in order for it to grow expand border and have production at same time very good idea, even if other cities pay for that. on other hand building terrascapas in big cities does not seems a good idea.

Dude, I know farm exist. I know free improvements exist. Comparisons were done with yields in civ 4 and 5 so I'm not making up the concept.
In civ 5, before patches, trading posts were an early improvement and gave +2 gold. Everyone built trading posts everywhere as long as they had to food for the population to work them. Because they felt that 2 surplus gold was better than 1 surplus food.

You're making the exact same type comparison, while also telling me that comparisons aren't possible.

Here's your most recent one:

4f 1e > 2f 2p 2c -6e
2f 7e > 2p 2c
1f 3.5e > 1p 1c
See? You can make a mathematical comparison, you're just making be write it out for you.

Now you've said terrascapes are situational. So how good would they have to be to no longer be situational and instead be something you'd build all the time. I'd bet if they gave 10 production instead of 2 you'd build them all the time. Which means you made a judgment of the relative value of production vs. the energy and food you'd lose out on by not building another improvement.

That's what I'm asking people for.

 

[Ryika]

There are so many variables involved that it's just not possible to give definitive numbers as long as the available improvements are so close to each other that they can't be profitably translated into other yields. When it comes to improvements though... well, biowells and academies have proven to be a very good basic strategy, they fit into the general "flow" of the game. Biowells come when you're done expanding and started transitioning into becoming a powerhouse, academies come when your health has stabilized and you're starting to snowball to ridiculous amounts of science. So from a min-maxing point of view, there's usually not that much room for other improvements. (Although superfarms do obviously also work) So meh, taking tile improvements as basis to evaluate yields is kind of pointless.

I'd say the first table you quoted is still quite near to what I'd come up with for a very general list though, except for health which is now probably worth quite a lot in the phase from early midgame till the point your cities start producing more than they need. But again, health is kind of awkward anyway, early on getting all the health buildings to not drop too low is one of the priorities for me (although less of a priority than expanding and getting improvements going) and then the biowell-spam follows solving all health issues.

Culture is probably worth a bit more in the early game and becomes less interesting later on, and science is basically worth ∞ amounts of gold in the "Rush to victory"-phase that begins as soon as health is fine.

 

[Olleus]

The problem is that 1 hammer here does not necessarily equal 1 hammer there. If I have a big city with all the buildings I already need; 1 hammer is equivalent to 1/4 food/energy/science/culture. On the other hand, if I'm building a victory wonder, then 1 hammer there might make me win earlier, so I might value it at several energy.

It seems almost pointless to debate how much energy 1 hammer/food is worth, when it's value isn't even constant.

 

[LORD ORION]

It's complicated because it's variable.

eg: Is culture worth 4 energy to you instead of 3 because you choose free maintenance on earth relics? (derp)

or how about

If it's early game and you're going very wide, food is probably not worth alot to you, because growing a city to 6 pop fast is still easy with any local tiles and it happens way faster then you can unlock gene gardens.

Now ask the same question when you have several 16 pop cities and the health to expand them, additional food becomes more valuable because it takes much more to grow your city now. How much energy are you willing to spend/give up to quickly increase food production?

Homework... play a game and on every turn calculate real life economic equations... come back here and explain your strategy, show your math work and explain how it affected your decisions. (yeah I know... your next question is "didn't anyone tell you today?")

 

[Laurwin]

Dude, I know farm exist. I know free improvements exist. Comparisons were done with yields in civ 4 and 5 so I'm not making up the concept.
In civ 5, before patches, trading posts were an early improvement and gave +2 gold. Everyone built trading posts everywhere as long as they had to food for the population to work them. Because they felt that 2 surplus gold was better than 1 surplus food.

You're making the exact same type comparison, while also telling me that comparisons aren't possible.

Here's your most recent one:

4f 1e > 2f 2p 2c -6e
2f 7e > 2p 2c
1f 3.5e > 1p 1c
See? You can make a mathematical comparison, you're just making be write it out for you.

Now you've said terrascapes are situational. So how good would they have to be to no longer be situational and instead be something you'd build all the time. I'd bet if they gave 10 production instead of 2 you'd build them all the time. Which means you made a judgment of the relative value of production vs. the energy and food you'd lose out on by not building another improvement.

That's what I'm asking people for.

I think that in Beyond Earth money (=energy) is not as valuable. The value of money in beyond earth becomes weaker because of couple of factors which affect BEyond earth meta-game:

-unit cost discounts are less, for rush buy. Money (=energy) basically has very little value because it has LESS BUYING POWER (the technical term is purchasing power)

-generators are like super trade posts basically in BE. You can spam money easily in Beyond Earth, but money is really weak, so there is little purpose in money EXEPT IN ORDER TO FINANCE OTHER THINGS.

-building maintenance costs are much cheaper in Beyond Earth. Most buildings only cost 1 gpt upkeep in Beyond Earth. And you get quests for free upkeep.

-you can spam solar collectors in your empire basically all the time. When you spam solar collectors you basically get raw yield +7 money boost for a long time (like 60 turns for boosted orbital)
And you can spam these basically cheap orbital units because the only cost is opportunity cost because the satelite occupies orbital space, which could possible used for better stronger satellites.

-The purchasing power problem in BE in my opinion causes the efefct that you want to get the better yield improvements, even if they cost more money to maintain. In the wild far-reaches of outer space, energy apparently comes out of thin air every time you want it to appear towards your benefit.

Well, you could use the money to purchase units straight-up, though... Maybe that would be cheaper if there were more unit purchase discounts? I haven't done the math on that.

 

[Victus75]

Solar Collectors are only available if you research that Harmony-associated leaf, so not viable if you are going for Purity or Supremacy.

 

[Laurwin]

Solar Collectors are only available if you research that Harmony-associated leaf, so not viable if you are going for Purity or Supremacy.

Even so, I think the solar collector shows us something about converting hammers into gold. (forgive my using civ5 resources here)

Solar collector; 80 hammers; 60 turns duration influencing your area in the orbit before crashing down.

solar collector influences 7 tiles max. Each tile gets +1 raw gold.
Also important to get your city tile within radius, because you get 20% boost to gold in the city.

Even in cases where you influence 7 tiles and NOT the city tile, you get 420 gold divided by 80 hammers. That would bring you basically 1 hammer = 5.25 gold

When you have city tile + 6 other tiles under the solar collector influence, you get even more benefit from the satellite. You get 420 times 1.2, divided by 80. That would bring 1 hammer = 6.3 gold.

even, so, lump sum gold is not the same value as gold per turn, that's good thing to note however.

 

[Ryika]

When you have city tile + 6 other tiles under the solar collector influence, you get even more benefit from the satellite. You get 420 times 1.2, divided by 80. That would bring 1 hammer = 6.3 gold.

...which is still not worth much because again, there are different conversion rates throughout the game. Building a Thorium Reactor (costs 105 production) on turn 120 for example will get you about ~300 gold throughout the rest of the game, leading to a (delayed) conversion rate of 1 hammer ~= 3 gold. Then if you add in the building quest (and, for simplicities sake say it triggers instantly), you have the choice to get 2 gold (making it ~5 gold per hammer) or converting the 2 gold for 1 hammer. Using the gold focus of a city will even convert 4 hammers into 1 gold which is probably the worst currency conversion in the whole game.

 

[CivScientist]

Not only do the gold to resource conversions change as you progress through the game but at any one time the marginal conversion rate changes as well. Getting a city to generate N gold per turn is pretty cheap...just rearrange your pop. 2N gold is more expensive. As a last resort, you get the most gold (3N say) by turning all your production to gold at a 4:1 ratio but that is very expensive.