Livestream #4, September 4th

[3of5]

I think the whole point is to make saving your energy a worthwhile strategy instead of "spending as soon as you got it" the only option. It is meant to add more strategy.

In the early game using the gold might be the better investment than hoarding it, because at that point actual growth is still exponential. Once all the cities have been founded though, natural growth of the colony slows and investment might become a really nice option, especcially when international trade adds heftily to surplus in peace time (and peace might be transitory )

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Personally I'm not a fan of investment. Resources are meant to be used, not to be hoarded.

Sometimes I had to stockpile some gold to upgrade troops, but it looks like upgrade comes free with affinity level.

You do Use them..
Imagine...
I Use 200 energy to Buy a building that gives me 1 energy per turn
OR
I Use that 200 energy by having it in my stockpile to get 2 energy per turn

Basically that "Virtue" lets you build a 'powerplant' with your energy sitting in the bank (a power plant that you can sell off for 100% return anytime you need it)

 

[ggmoyang]

Well it's still weak early game, there is +5 energy in capital virtue. To get +5 bonus from investment, I need to collect 500 energy. And that was cost of a settler in ciV.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well it's still weak early game, there is +5 energy in capital virtue. To get +5 bonus from investment, I need to collect 500 energy. And that was cost of a settler in ciV.

True.. but its not quite "early" game (unless you rush it for it)

Its much better mid game

 

[Suicidekills]

Quick question about the virtue tree. If two virtues connect to one virtue do you need both of them to get to that virtue like in ciV or does one suffice? The way the virtue tree is made makes it seem like it's the latter.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Quick question about the virtue tree. If two virtues connect to one virtue do you need both of them to get to that virtue like in ciV or does one suffice? The way the virtue tree is made makes it seem like it's the latter.

It looked to me like you only need one of the prerequisite virtues linked to the one you want.

 

[GenEngineer]

It looked to me like you only need one of the prerequisite virtues linked to the one you want.

Other videos (such as The SolarGamers first 100 turns as ARC) showed that you only need one prerequisite to advance a virtue.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The main question is if you can go Back up the tree

ie
X.....Y
..\../
...Z
so go from X to Z and then take Y because Z is connecting to it.

 

[Suicidekills]

O ok great thanks guys. Also to KrikkitTwo, I think that's highly doubtful.

 

[Lucius_]

I second the highly doubtful. I would be very surprised if that is possible. Some virtues go through weaker ones. If you could go back upwards, you could just skip the weak or situational branch and back track to get the good stuff without the weaker.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I second the highly doubtful. I would be very surprised if that is possible. Some virtues go through weaker ones. If you could go back upwards, you could just skip the weak or situational branch and back track to get the good stuff without the weaker.

If it is truly situational, then you should be able to avoid it if you aren't in that situation.

Also, I'm now wondering how it works for techs (ie can/can't research an inner ring if only connection is from the outer ring)

 

[Epic Eric]

The main question is if you can go Back up the tree

ie
X.....Y
..\../
...Z
so go from X to Z and then take Y because Z is connecting to it.

Probably not, if I had to guess you'd have to get X and Y to research Z. I don't see why that'd be possible if you are supposed to research inner technologies before outer.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Probably not, if I had to guess you'd have to get X and Y to research Z. I don't see why that'd be possible if you are supposed to research inner technologies before outer.

No.. to get Z you only need to get X OR Y.. that much we know already

 

[Manannan]

Just a quick question to those saying that investment and the industry depth t3 kicker don't look that impressive: have you noticed in the livestreams how often energy seems to be running at a negative in the late game? Take a look at livestream 4 in particular; he's running at -6 (I think, quality is fuzzy) energy per turn, but is still sitting on damn near 3000 energy stockpiled. I don't think it's much of a stretch (especially since he's playing as Polystralia) to suggest that's probably investment at work. And that's without a particularly big army as far as I can tell. Compare that to the supremacy game shown in livestream 3 where he's running at -137/ept with his giant army of doomy doom; if he had investment working for him there that would be quite frankly insane to still be coming away with +63/ept out of that. Having the ability to be making money despite having built so many units/buildings/tile improvements that you're running at a negative lends itself to all sorts of possibilities, especially if you're going to warmonger.

Think about it in CiV terms; what if you could run all your caravans/cargo ships to one of your cities with food/production instead of trading for money, and still end up with 100-200g coming your way every turn as long as you made some sacrifices with your gold earlier? Yea, there's some potential there.

 

[Acken]

Regarding investment. Some maths to make you decide whether or not it is good.

With a 1% interest, doubling your capital takes approximately 70 turns. With 2% it takes approximately 35 turns. Therefore you could argue that investing (not spending) 500Energy will net you 500/70=7.14 gpt for the next 70 turns (which you must wait 70turns before spending).
That's just for this 500 investment. Which means that 7.14 gpt would be the worth of the policy only if you make 0 gpt from other sources. So in reality it's worth more if you have positive base gpt and less if you have negative base gpt. The exact amount of "more"/"less" would require to know how much gpt you make and how much of it you spend.

If you never spend your energy then the easy following formula can be used:
Let's say g_ k s your gpt before investment virtue at turn k
C is your initial gold
T is the time where you make your
i is the interest rate (either 1 or 2%)
Then Gold_at_T = C * (1+i)^T + Sum(k=1;k=T) g_k * (1+i) ^ (T - k)
With an easy formula if you assume g_k=g constant:
Gold_at_T = C * (1+i)^T + g*((1+i)^T-1)/i)

If you know in advance what kind of cash outflows you will do (spending) then it becomes easy to calculate Gold_at_T. By noting A_k each outflows at time k then you will just substract the compounded A_k from time k to T (which is A_k * (1+i) ^ (T-k)) to the previous formula to know how much Gold_at_T you will end up with.

Then by substracting what you would normally have got without interest you can calculate the cumulated interests and from there how much gpt it is equivalent to.
Now the right question would then be: Do you think investing a virtue and C amount of gold for T turns is worth this increased amount of gpt ?

Let's get a Civ5 example.

Imagine you can reach 500 gold at turn 50. Now let's say you only plan to buy a university at turn 100. And then want to know how much cash you have at turn 130 (for observatories for example). Now let's assume you make 15gold per turn up to turn 130 (in reality you'd probably make a lot more than that on average).
In a fictional civ5 where you can make the 500gold investment at 1% your capital at time 130 would then be (note that there are 80turns between T50 and T130, and university costs 660):
500*(1.01)^80 + 15 * ((1.01^80 - 1) / 0.01) - 660 * 1.01 ^ 30 = 2043.85

By comparison, if you didn't take the interest policy you'd have accumulated: 500 + 15 * 80 - 660 = 1040.
So in conclusion you could see the policy alone being worth (2043-1040)/80 = 12.53 gpt IN THAT SPECIFIC SCENARIO.

Now this is only an example and things must be weighted against the opportunity cost of investing these 500 in a building/unit instead at T50

Edit: this also assumes the game uses floats for energy calculations (at least internally).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Did they say anything about how you get spies? (When talking about the free ones)

 

[ggmoyang]

Did they say anything about how you get spies? (When talking about the free ones)

I think not, but it looks like one need to build Spy Agency national wonder.

The tooltip for Spy Agency (Requires Computing) was 'enables covert ops'
Also, the 'For your eyes only'' quest requires you to research computing.

500*(1.01)^80 + 15 * ((1.01^80 - 1) / 0.01) - 660 * 1.01 ^ 30 = 2043.85

By comparison, if you didn't take the interest policy you'd have accumulated: 500 + 15 * 80 - 660 = 1040.
So in conclusion you could see the policy alone being worth (2043-1040)/80 = 12.53 gpt IN THAT SPECIFIC SCENARIO.

And Acken, thank you for the math. That's quite convincing. But still, I think the assumption rely on not spending energy too long.
BTW I believe the game uses float and rounds numbers at fifth decimal, since science cap was 214748.3647

 

[Acken]

"Too long" isn't a very accurate measure ^^
We will have to see how energy is important in the game. If we look at civ5 players tend to hoard gold and spend a lot at once for critical buildings like science stuff. So it rises up for 40 or so turn then all is spent etc.

We can see how it would look like then from turn 50 to 150. Let's say you buy 3 universities at turn 110, 3 schools at 150. This make the following Outflows:

660x3 = 1980 at turn 110
2760 at turn 150

Now let's make the more realistic assumption that your gpt is no longer a flat 15gpt but increases linearly. For example let's say you get 10gpt at turn 50 and then it increases by 1 each turn up to 110gpt at turn 150. And let's start with 500gold at turn 50 again.

The formula for the cumulated amount from the rising gpt only gives 8753 gold (using the increasing annuity formula from any good financial mathematics book).

The total gold after 200 turn would be:
500*(1.01)^150 + 8753 - 1980*1.01^40 - 2760 = 4397

Not getting the policy would give the following amount out of the gpt only (using the sum of the numbers from 1 to 150 formula): 9*100 + (1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 100) = 5950

The total gold after 200 turn would be:
500 + 5950 - 1980 - 2760 = 1710

In that scenario the investment virtue would therefore net 4240gold or 42gpt. Yep.

Should pretty much show that this policy is very strong if you plan on hoarding gold along the game to spend it at critical times. If you plan on spending it every time it reaches 250, yes it is a lot weaker. But I think I've shown quite clearly that this has potential to be pretty damn OP.

Edit: Now for fun, let's say you must spend even more, let's say 500 every 20 turns. Without the investment virtue this is not possible (we spend 2500 gold total). But with the virtue you still end up positive with 526gold.

 

[GenEngineer]

Does anyone know what the next Livestream will be about? They didn't seem to mention it at the end... (here's hoping for covert operations)

 

[Lucius_]

It hasn't been mentioned. I'm guessing more detailed coverage of the tech web. Covert ops would be great as well. There are 7 thurs between now and release. I wonder how many more livestreams will they do.