Market & Grocer

[Nick Carpathia]

Uh, so what's the problem? If you're working a merchant slot instead of a plains hill mine, that's 4 less hammers anyway. If you're really desperate to do two things at the same time, then just work some merchants and hammer out your longbows or whatever.

I for one love markets after a good hard ReX out to 12 cities. It's not unusual for me to drop down to the 10-20% slider range, maybe go up to 20-30% slider when currency, and then suddenly shoot up to 50% when I manage to whip and chop out a few markets in my heavily cottaged cities. Sure, my slider will increase anyway as cottages mature and your commerce-to-maintenance ratio increases, but the +25% can pay for alot of your maintenance, giving you alot more beakers. The counterpoint is, of course, they're commerce-later instead of commerce-now, meaning their RoI has to compete with short-term effects of wealthbuilds.

It's a shame they effectively obsolete when you go for science victories, as your slider will gradually climb up to the 80% range, and you'll make up any shortfall using factory/power wealthbuild. But hey, they did their job at a critical time.

Also, I've worried about Ivory and Whales going obsolete, but never Furs. Who is going to tech plastics before the game is wrapped up? The entire planet should have been trampled under the hooves of your cavalry or stormed by marines long ago.

 

[ston]

No? 3 ----> 3 via build wealth working a grass hill mine. We're talking BTS here, it worked differently back in the day.

A merchant is 3 at -2, while a grass mine only costs 1 (riverside grass mines compare even more favorably of course).

Oh! I thought building gold, beakers or culture converted 50% of the hammers

100% coversion changes things somewhat!

Thanks for the answer, I'll have to check this out.

 

[Diamond]

One thing to note is that the gold modifiers of the city (ie: market, grocer, bank, etc) aren't used on the gold obtained from building wealth. Instead, the production modifiers of the city (forge, factory, etc) are applied to the hammers and the result is then turned into gold when building wealth.

So if the city has higher gold modifiers then production modifiers, a merchant should be more beneficial. Likewise, if the production modifiers are better, building wealth should be better.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Maybe.

Imagine a city with 2 farms and 4 grass hills. That can be size 7 (center, 2 farms, 4 hills) or size 5 (center, 2 farms, 2 merchants)

configuration #2 gives 1 hammer, 6 gold to send through mulitpliers
Config #1 gives 13 hammers to send through multipliers.

For #2 to be equal, you'd have to have 0 production multipliers and all the wealth multipliers. Unless you are running rep, which changes things, or have sistine, which has a difference you may or may not care about.

If you give them both 7 size, an extra farm gives #1 4 hammers - you still need a market and a grocer to have equal output.

 

[cabert]

Oh! I thought building gold, beakers or culture converted 50% of the hammers

100% coversion changes things somewhat!

Thanks for the answer, I'll have to check this out.

it's a vanilla vs BtS thing
vanilla is 50%, gold modifiers applying
BtS is 100%, hammer modifiers applying

 

[dragomaster]

Maybe.

Imagine a city with 2 farms and 4 grass hills. That can be size 7 (center, 2 farms, 4 hills) or size 5 (center, 2 farms, 2 merchants)

configuration #2 gives 1 hammer, 6 gold to send through mulitpliers
Config #1 gives 13 hammers to send through multipliers.

For #2 to be equal, you'd have to have 0 production multipliers and all the wealth multipliers. Unless you are running rep, which changes things, or have sistine, which has a difference you may or may not care about.

If you give them both 7 size, an extra farm gives #1 4 hammers - you still need a market and a grocer to have equal output.

I dont know if people said this but the merchents do also get GP points that in turn gives more monney/reserch/food

 

[Diamond]

Maybe.

Imagine a city with 2 farms and 4 grass hills. That can be size 7 (center, 2 farms, 4 hills) or size 5 (center, 2 farms, 2 merchants)

configuration #2 gives 1 hammer, 6 gold to send through mulitpliers
Config #1 gives 13 hammers to send through multipliers.

For #2 to be equal, you'd have to have 0 production multipliers and all the wealth multipliers. Unless you are running rep, which changes things, or have sistine, which has a difference you may or may not care about.

If you give them both 7 size, an extra farm gives #1 4 hammers - you still need a market and a grocer to have equal output.

But you're gimping the merchant city here, unnecessarily. If 2 farms/4 grass hills is the land you're dealt, you could put windmills on those hills, work all the land, and have 2 merchants (max size = 8). With mines on all 4 hills, max size = 6. The center does not count as a population point, you just get it's production (for this example, I'll assume the standard 2 food, 1 hammer, 1 commerce).

Of course, a windmilled hill's output depends on era (as does a mined hill), but they start at 2 food, 1 hammer, 1 commerce, so I'll use that in these calculations:

The merchant city would produce 16 food, 5 hammers, 5 commerce, 6 gold.
The mined hill city would produce 12 food, 13 hammers, 1 commerce.

For this example, let's assume the science slider is set at 50%:

The mined hill city building wealth will give 13 gold + prod modifiers + .5 gold + gold modifiers. The merchant city (which can also build wealth, btw) would give 8.5 gold + gold modifiers + 5 gold + prod modifiers

So, if the city has a market and forge only:
mined hill city = 13 + (13*.25) + .5 + (.5*.25) = 16.875 gold
merchant city = 8.5 + (8.5*.25) + 5 + (5*.25) = 16.875 gold

Note that these calculations are assuming BTS doesn't round down prematurely anywhere. IIRC, that was also changed from how it worked in vanilla.

So gold production balances out at 50% on the science slider. If science % is higher, the mined hill city would be the better gold producer, if lower the merchant city would be better.

But since grocers and banks come well before factories and power plants, and windmills improve with Replaceable Parts before mines do with Railroads, there's quite a long era where the merchant city will outstrip the mined hill city in gold production.

 

[Negator_UK]

I often find I put factories and grocers in the same queue, factory first.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I often find I put factories and grocers in the same queue, factory first.

Too bad you can't post-queue coal plants to go after factories. That would actually be useful.

 

[NihilZero]

It always annoys me that you can't queue buildings that depend on each other. 99% of the time a factory is followed by a power plant, but you can't queue it.

Even the occasional walls -> castle queue would be nice. Yes, I know, walls and castles are for noobs.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Walls and castles are legit builds under the right circumstances. Making the AI sit there for 10 turns bombarding while you have all the time in the world to reinforce just because you whipped them is a good deal; much better than losing the city.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Castle is a great improvement, as well - extra trade route and boost to espionage, not very expensive.

 

[LuCiver]

The value of markets is improved if you run a binary slider (100% science or 100% wealth). Put them in your sci/commerce cities so you get a bonus under either condition.

 

[Celebithil]

@LuCiver: Running binary sliders have nothing to do with the benefit of markets/grocers. Running binary slider is usually meant as replacing, say 10 turns of 70% science with 3 turns of 0% science and 7 turns of 100% science. The total benefit of a market in a city with say 100 commerce is either 10 turns of (30*25%=)7.5 gold, or 3 turns of (100*25%=)25 gold. Both of which amounts to 75 gold.

 

[vicawoo]

Most cities which could run merchants probably wouldn't bother building a market in the medieval age.

At some point in the slider, they become more cost efficient than libraries.

Let's see, let r be the research slider, assume the gold slider is 1-r.
90/r vs 150/(1-r)
3 - 3r vs 5 r
Libraries are better when the beaker slider is > 3/8 = .375. But once you hit sub 40%, markets don't do so badly (more like libraries get pretty bad).

 

[Negator_UK]

Walls and castles are legit builds under the right circumstances.

Castles ROCK.

Recently I have started making walls the first thing I build (ok, whip) in conquered cities, it helps thin the AI counteroffensive stacks. If I can make it a castle pre-gunpowder (not always possible) then I have truly conquered the area.

And whadaya know ? That's what castles were used for in real life...