Money.

[Emperor2]

I'm almost positive this is going to be regarded as the stupidest question ever posted on here, but despite the risk of ridicule and humiliation, I really want to know.

What is the difference between and ?

 

[mavajo]

I believe your Science, Culture and Money sliders are pooled from Commerce. So if you're ticking along at 80% Science and 20% Money, then 80% of your commerce goes toward generating Science, while the remaining 20% goes towards generating money.

I've only been playing for a week, though, so I could be completely wrong. This is a big game...takes a while to wrap my head around it all, and I'm an old school Civ and Civ 2 player.

 

[Orion071]

I believe your Science, Culture and Money sliders are pooled from Commerce. So if you're ticking along at 80% Science and 20% Money, then 80% of your commerce goes toward generating Science, while the remaining 20% goes towards generating money.

I've only been playing for a week, though, so I could be completely wrong. This is a big game...takes a while to wrap my head around it all, and I'm an old school Civ and Civ 2 player.

That's it, you've got it right. And it's certainly not a stupid question, I see people confused by it all of the time. Tiles and trade routes generate commerce , which the sliders turn into research , culture and money .

 

[MrCynical]

Actually this is far from a stupid question - it's one of the most misunderstood distinctions in Civ 4.

Commerce commerce: ) is produced by the tiles around your city, by your trade routes, and also by your palace. It can be thought of essentially as a raw material. What happens to it depends on the position of your sliders. Suppose your science slider is set to 80% and your empire is currently generating 10 (I'll ignore the culture slider for simplicity's sake).

80% of this commerce will be converted to science science: ) and 20% will be converted to gold gold: ). You therefore would end up with 8 to go towards your current research project, and 2 to go to your treasury, and then be used to pay maintenance or whatever.

Hence commerce is a raw material - depending how your sliders are set it is converted into some combination of science, gold, culture and (if you have the BtS expansion) espionage. All of these may also be produced by means independent of commerce (e.g. specialists, buildings etc.)

 

[pikesfan]

I think I liked the old Civ 1 way of indicating commerce, by two arrows.

 

[6K Man]

Commerce is input. Gold/money is output.

 

[Maben]

While it has been explained, I feel it is important to point out something that I missed for a LONG time when I first started playing. Banks, Markets, Grocers, Wall Street, etc. only increase a city's GOLD and not its commerce. If you are running your slider on high (80-100%) then most of the time the boosts from these buildings will be minimal and many times less than ideal. It is important, in my opinion, to build these buildings in cities where they have a big effect (ex. in a city with a shrine or corporation) and not everywhere like I used to, it is usually a waste of production.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

While it has been explained, I feel it is important to point out something that I missed for a LONG time when I first started playing. Banks, Markets, Grocers, Wall Street, etc. only increase a city's GOLD and not its commerce. If you are running your slider on high (80-100%) then most of the time the boosts from these buildings will be minimal and many times less than ideal. It is important, in my opinion, to build these buildings in cities where they have a big effect (ex. in a city with a shrine or corporation) and not everywhere like I used to, it is usually a waste of production.

Except that markets also increase happiness and grocers increase health (with the right resources, of course). I agree completely, though, that you still don't build the building if you don't need it in that city.

 

[gunkulator]

I think I liked the old Civ 1 way of indicating commerce, by two arrows.

Civ2 also used two arrows. Civ3 changed it to the nebulous gold round thing and Civ4 picked up that change.