In depth guide to commerce?

[shadow_archmagi]

So, here's my knowledge of the game: At the beginning of time, hundreds of giant hammers, coins, and slices of bread littered the landscape.

Your cities produce skilled laborers who harvest these for your benefit. Here's the tick, though:

One hammer on a tile means you produce... one hammer. A city that is harvesting five hammers every turn will take 3 turns to produce a unit that requires 15 production. Same with bread.

Coins, on the other hand, don't seem to follow this. More coins DOES equal more gold, but only in a vague sense. I can't seem to figure out the actual system. Trade routes likewise; sometimes acquiring a new trade route boosts my gold considerably, other times it has no effect.

How the heck does this work? What are the NUMBERS behind it?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Trade routes are commerce same as tile yields.

At 0% on all sliders, all your commerce goes to gold.

At 100% research, all your commerce goes to research.

You lose gold equal to the city maintenance for each city you have, and you also lose gold due to troop numbers, troop supply and civic costs.

If you want to avoid a loss you need to make your sliders add up to less than 100% to convert some commerce into gold to pay your expenses. Gold is what is "left over" when you apply the slider percentages of total commerce to research/espionage/culture.

Note that specialists do not produce commerce. They produce actual gold/beakers/espionage/culture/hammers which are independent of the slider settings.

Hope that makes sense.

EDIT: Fixed some mistakes.

EDIT2: Fixed some minor typos


EDIT3: Once you have the raw commerce going to research/culture/espionage/gold (what is left over from 100%), the multipliers you get from buildings etc. are then applied. (These multipliers are also applied to specialist yield as well).

 

[shadow_archmagi]

EDIT: Fixed some mistakes.

So what you're saying is:

(Coins Produced by Tile)x(Percent not being spent on research/culture)-(maintenance)=(Coins in treasury)?

So if I have one city, with one gold mine producing 5 coins per turn, and no research, and losing 1 gold per turn to maintenance, then I should be getting 4 coins per turn?


How much commerce are trade routes worth?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Yep, that's basically it (not sure if troop maintenance/civic cost is a part of the maintenance for each city however, someone else would need to answer that).

Trade route commerce is listed next to the trade route. It normally starts off as 1 commerce for internal routes and 2 for foreign, but this goes up as the game goes on/cities get larger (there's an article in the war academy about trade routes I believe).

 

[Merovinge]

I have a quick question about research. It appears at times, particularly early on, that total beakers needed for a breakthrough divided by my beakers per turn does not add up. More specifically it seems like I get techs quicker than I should be getting them. Is this a fudge factor for playing at Prince/Monarch? Is there any speed benefit in having multiple pre-reqs for a tech when I research it?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Each pre-req adds 20% to the rate I think.

You also get a bonus depending upon how many civs know the tech already.

 

[Merovinge]

Each pre-req adds 20% to the rate I think.

You also get a bonus depending upon how many civs know the tech already.

Ahh thank you very much, so I am not crazy, and the tech rate is much more complicated than it initially appears.

 

[s.bernbaum]

So what you're saying is:

(Coins Produced by Tile)x(Percent not being spent on research/culture)-(maintenance)=(Coins in treasury)?

So if I have one city, with one gold mine producing 5 coins per turn, and no research, and losing 1 gold per turn to maintenance, then I should be getting 4 coins per turn?


How much commerce are trade routes worth?

One minor detail here: The coins you see on the map are not gold. They are commerce. Gold is symbolized by a stack of coins. So, in your example: 5 coins (commerce) per turn with no research yields 100% gold, which in the very early game is pretty much one commerce (or coin) converting to one gold (or stack of coins), minus the 1 gold maintenance = 4 gold. However, due to inflation later in the game, it takes more than one commerce to yield one gold. That is probably why gold is symbolized as a stack of coins.

 

[w2w2w]

Trade routes are commerce same as tile yields.

At 0% on all sliders, all your commerce goes to gold.

At 100% research, all your commerce goes to research.

You lose gold equal to the city maintenance for each city you have, and you also lose gold due to troop numbers, troop supply and civic costs.

If you want to avoid a loss you need to make your sliders add up to less than 100% to convert some commerce into gold to pay your expenses. Gold is what is "left over" when you apply the slider percentages of total commerce to research/espionage/culture.

Note that specialists do not produce commerce. They produce actual gold/beakers/espionage/culture/hammers which are independent of the slider settings.

Hope that makes sense.

EDIT: Fixed some mistakes.

EDIT2: Fixed some minor typos


EDIT3: Once you have the raw commerce going to research/culture/espionage/gold (what is left over from 100%), the multipliers you get from buildings etc. are then applied. (These multipliers are also applied to specialist yield as well).

or find a religion along with it's special world building, then get market, grocer, bank for 100% more gold, get specialists, later get wall street and if everything goes well you should be getting at least +50

 

[jabberwalkee_]

Someone should really do up a flowchart to answer these kinds of questions. Like a pyramid with commerce at the top flowing all the way down through multipliers and adding in specialists and shrine gold with gold, science, culture and espionage at the bottom.

 

[logarithm64]

Okay then, here's a flowchart for commerce (espionage has been omitted for the sake of clarity):

Edit: Added more detail, changed background colour, resized

 

[jabberwalkee_]

WOW. Nice work!

 

[Mike Lowe]

Question about foreign trade routes. If I'm connected directly to a neighbor, will open trade routes with a civ on the OTHER side of that connected neighbor be eligible as a foreign trade route?

In other words, I don't have a direct road from my civ to theirs, but we share a civ in between us.

Finally, with that scenario above, what if the MIDDLE civ does not have open borders with me (or the other civ?)? Can I get a foreign trade route from the far civ even though I'm not open with my direct neighbor?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

PS covered it already.

You can get a very, very good picture of how it works by going into a city screen and mousing over your outputs, then changing the slider and looking again. Doing that should make things pretty obvious.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Well the last question was about trade routes.

As long as there is a trade route connection between capital cities (via roads, rivers or coasts with sailing, or intercontinental with astronomy) through territory you have open borders with you have a trade route.

If you close borders with a civ in the middle you wont get a trade route with a civ beyond it unless you have sailing and coastal cities. EDIT: And I think you need to have a route via the coast which avoids the coast of the civ with closed borders too.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

and look closely at the third box form the top in the excellent flowchart .

the only function in the game that has a multiplier effect on COMMERCE is the civic BUREAUCRACY .

made things alot simpler for me when I finally accepted that fact

 

[Notenoughtrebs]

I still find the commerce/gold/research things a bit confusing.

I could do with some practical advice

For example it is often suggested to have a commerce city and a research city.

Is the only difference between the two the buildings you are building? That is both should have a high commerce from surrounding cottages and specialists?

And if my goal is to have the science slider up high (e.g. I aim for 60-80 percent), then I should, in general, prioritize science buildings that multiply science, as I get more return on the commerce investment by doing that than building gold multiplying buildings?

Is my thinking right here?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I think the advice is to have a science city and a gold city.

Science city has Oxford, an academy, and all the science buildings. It works cottages or other high commerce tiles, is preferably on the coast for better trade routes, and turns excess citizens into scientists. Settle Great Scientists here.

Your gold city has one (or more) shrines preferably, and builds gold multiplier buildings before science buildings (it can get those too though). Wall Street will go here and corporations will be founded here too. Excess citizens are turned into merchants. It's good to settle Great Prophets here (+2H +5G) after making shrines. Always settle Great Merchants (+1F +6G) here too (if you don't need the immediate cash from a trade mission). Running merchant specialists with high food is normally a good plan rather than working all cottages I find since they don't depend on the science slider, so you want food. Production is good for this city too. I like a mix of mines and farms normally.

The science city can produce gold too and the gold city can produce science depending upon how high the slider is.

 

[barbertje]

Nice flowchart, but it needs another box for commerce from the palace.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Commerce from the Palace is just "base commerce" though.

EDIT: Oh I see. There should be a box for "commerce from buildings" i.e. the palace or buildings boosted by random events (if there are any that give commerce instead of gold/culture/research/espionage).