In my opinion, financial is just way too strong. Early on, ur capital or any of the 2-3 cities u additionally build will have rivers/$$ resources/food resources on sea. i've looked at my save games, and while cities early on are limited by 4-5 pop, at least 3 tiles in each and every city gain +1 $$ from financial, compared to what they would have gained had they not have it.
i usually have 3 cities - so that's +9 $$ each and every turn early on - that's huge. and that's not counting the +25% from libary early on.
later on, financial doesn't just diminish in strength, quite the opposite - in all my economic/science cities each and every tile has the +1 on it - so for pop 21 that's +20$$ - again, not counting the +% from buildigs.
at least 1/3 of my cities have coastal access (i usually play fractal). on average, for a city size 10, 3 of the tiles are coastal tiles - so that's +3 per coastal city, thus +1 per city on average for each pop 10.
for 10 cities of roughly pop 10, that's +10$$ which is roughly what the organized trait will get u... (thx Roland Johansen)
even changing financial to +1 for +3 tile won't make it sub-par trait - it's advantages are just huge.
as i see it, 2 traits are the most important "financially" which are financial and philosophical. either one of them is a must if u want to keep up with the ai's tech on high lvls.
so let's compare the 2 traits. if u're philo, u'll go for SE, so that's farms + specialists. and if u're financial, u'll go for CE. (I won't turn it into CE vs SE thread).
a grass+river tile which u'll normally find near ur capital and starting towns will get u +3F+1G for farmed and 2F+3G for cottaged. u need 2 farms for 1 specialist, so for 2 such tiles, it's - 6F+2G compared to 4F+6G.
That's +4G for CE compared to the +3 GP rate. 2 specialists - tha'ts +8G compared to +6 GP rate.
that's +8G advantage till u have the first great scientist (10 turns).
so u'll say - in 10 turns (100/12) we'll have a great scientist, and settle it for +6G, and then the balance towards philo might shift. Nope, it doesn't - in those 10 turns ur cottages will mature to hamlets, making it +12G - compared to the +6G from the settled scientist it's still double, so CE consistently wins till late game.
had financial been +1 on +3 tiles, the balance of power between those 2 traits would change back and forth - CE stronger early on (as i just explained), SE stronger later on cause the GPP needed to create a new GP increases only by 100 each time while cottages takes longer to mature, and finally, CE stronger late game cause of that raw +20$$ for ur economic/tech cities (which are usually at least half of the total number of cities u have).
Regardless, the +1$$ for water tiles is strong enough by itself.
i do think that the addition of a reduced production costs of banks/markets to the financial trait would be cool.
I guarantee u that even if firaxis change the financial trait, the majority of players will still cottage spam and choose financial.
long post, if u've made it to the finish line u probably don't have a life (what does it say about the writer
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