LawLessOne said:
I disagree. One of the most difficult parts of Civ4 is the financial. A city that doesnt 'pull' its own is a 'drag' on the rest of the empire. If you get too many such cities your empire will 'crash and burn'.
While what you state in the above quote is, strictly speaking, true, your conclusions are completely false.
A city does
not pull its own weight on gold. It pulls it on commerce. Since you can freely adjust the sliders, how much of that commerce ends up as gold and how much as beakers is
entirely irrelevant.
To demonstrate this, let's suppose the rest of your civ generates a total of 200 commerce, and your maintenance costs are 20 gold/turn. Hence you run 90% science and produce 180 beakers/turn with a balanced budget. Further suppose that the new city would generate 40 commerce and cost 28 - more than doubling your maintenance costs.
Based on your analysis, the city would only produce 4 gold, which is less than 28, so you should not found the city.
Based on a correct analysis, you will generate a total of 240 commerce with the new city, with total costs of 48 gold/turn. So, you run 80% science and produce
192 beakers/turn with a balanced budget. You've lowered your science rate to do it, but you're still producing more beakers.
Now, this is an idealized example. It'll almost never come out that pretty, with balanced budgets in both cases. But in any case, you can run, say, 80% some of the time and 90% some of the time to duplicate the effect.
Because you can adjust the sliders freely, comparing a city's cost to its
gold production at your current slider settings is completely invalid and gives you NO useful information whatsoever. The comparison that actually tells you whether a city pulls its own weight is
commerce to cost,
NOT gold to cost.
