Philosophical: Long-term prospects

I don't think you understand what the word "leveraging" means.

How about this:

When utilizing a solid combination of civics/wonders/buildings to re-emphasize the bonus that PHI gives, it is a great way to grab tons of EARLY great people. Namely Parthenon, Great Library, Pacifism, and 7 other scientist specialists gives you 29 GPP + 250% = 101.5 GPP/turn

solid.
 
One more for the first half-dozen or so... then two for much of the game.

So what is hyperbole, 'tons' or 'early'?
 
LOL... you're out of your element if you think you're only getting 1 or 2 more early with 101.5 GPP/turn

Those early GP will pop so quick it'll make you're head spin.

Don't forget that Pacifism isn't always a good idea for non-PHI civs, since their strength is more so in other areas. I won't really do a Pacifism push if I'm not PHI or IND. You're better of staying on OR.

So there it is again... leveraging
 
Personal attacks aren't a substitute for reasonable arguments.

I'm very much in my element, thank you very much. I can also be bothered to look up the GPP tables and take other factors into account before throwing bold statements across the room.

Look at the number for GP costs, adjust for the fact that PHI isn't quite doubling it once you get going (I personally avoid Pacifism in most games, but there's also at least the National Epic in your main GP city. Probably the Parthenon if you're hoping to pop any from multiple cities).
Your claim is simply unsupportable, which is a little embarassing given your tone.
 
well, I'm not embarrassed and maybe you're a slight bit paranoid (and less than cultured on awesome movies like "The Big Lebowski" since it was just a quote)

Look at this or that chart and add up all the numbers and divide, but

PHI DOES DOUBLE YOUR BASE GP POINTS. Don't try to change the rules of the game. +100% base GPP means doubling your base GPP. Word play don't change math. You want to add in National Epic? Go right ahead. Now you're getting over 130 GPP/turn in the fairly early game.

My claim is fully supportable, valid, and stylish, that's right... stylish. Since, once again LEVERAGING is what the last 5 posts have been regarding. LEVERAGING your traits with your build queue / economic plan. In this, my point is triumphant if not simply stylish.

LEVERAGING.... ahhh, it sounds so good.
 
Aww, how cute. Your all-caps statement is incorrect, and it would have taken 20 seconds to check it.

Bonuses in Civ4 work in a very inelegant way, and the mathematical notation doesn't always mean what it should mean. Generally, all bonuses are additive rather than multiplicative.
I actually checked in a recent savegame because something fundamental might have changed in 3.17 without me noticing. No. 80 GPP, +100% from buildings + 100% from Philosophical gives a total rate of 240GPP.

And since it seems to mean so much to you, congratulations on your style, taste, eloquence, modesty and ability to make stringent arguments. I can in all honesty say that I have rarely seen such on these boards.
 
ahhh..... let's see 80 +100% = 160 well... according to higher math... that's double. Please NOTE: I'm not saying it doubles you TOTAL GPP only your BASE GPP. And PHI does double your BASE GPP. So given the BASE 29GPP that I used in my previous example, WITH national epic

That's 29GPP +100% National epic +100% PHI (again doubling BASE GPP) +100% Pacifism (leveraging) +50% Parthenon (leveraging) = 29 + 29 + 29 + 29 + 14.5 = 130.5

And since it seems to mean so much to you, congratulations on your style, taste, eloquence, modesty and ability to make stringent arguments. I can in all honesty say that I have rarely seen such on these boards.

Thanks... That's called leveraging a debate... with style


EDIT: my ability to make stringent (ie. strict and rigid) arguments? Most argumentative points are stringent... otherwise the debate wouldn't really occur.
 
Sorry Blitz but Philo is only giving you 29 extra GPP/turn. That is not going to make a serious difference compared to a non-philo civ.

Assuming you have two cities set up as you described, one philo, one is not. Also, assume that each just start accumulating points towards their fifth GP (which is pretty reasonable in my book) over the next 100 turns each will generate the following amount of GP:

Philo Civ will get GP on turns(101 GPP/turn): 5, 11, 18, 26, 35, 45, 57, 71, 87
A non-philo Civ will get GP on turns(72 GPP/turn): 7, 16, 25, 37, 49, 63, 80, 99

So the Philo civ gets 9 and the non-philo civ gets 8. You are not generating a ton of more early GP due to Philo.
 
That's 1 city. Try with 3 GP Farms. 1 City returns to 0 GPP after popping the GP. But the strength of PHI and Pacifism is that it spans the whole empire, not just 1 big GP farm. Cities that did not pop the GP retain their GP points and just assume the higher GP point requirement for the next GP. While your counts and numbers make a lot of sense for a 1 city GP farm operation, the idea of PHI is to have multiple strong GP farms that will pop GP intermittently.

Also, my argument was about leveraging. Not the discussion on the whole. I was arguing that leveraging the PHI trait would be going for Parthenon, Great Library, and utilizing Pacifism spikes. Iranon had said in a previous post that we should be looking at pure PHI trait bonus and not the buildings / civics... but that's the whole entire point of LEVERAGING.

Again, I don't use pacifism unless I'm PHI or IND.

The current portion of the discussion was on leveraging.

Again. 29GPP / turn EXTRA is 100% IE DOUBLE the base GPP.

In this, I am not wrong, but very right as that is what we were debating.
 
Umm...Blitzkrieg... I would imagine that if Iranon is playing on deity he's probably familiar with the basics of leveraging Philosophical (and other traits as well).
 
I believe that Philosophical's true strength is a large number of early great people without the need for pacifism. Pacifism is a terrible civic in many ways, and the opportunity to earn great people while still enjoying the wonder that is organized religion/theocracy is a very large bonus.

I don't use Pacifism with my philosophical leaders, because I'm actually getting less benefit from it than if I was using a non-philosophical leader; I'll stay with organized and have my little buildfest, or I'll enjoy my +2 exp on every one of my soldiers.

What's more, I have the advantage end-game of being in free religion while still enjoying greater GP points, I can set up a new GP farm if I capture a shrine and NEED a prophet, and I will CONSISTENTLY get to liberalism before those stupid financial civs. ;)
 
@Pigswill Well, go read again as both TheMeInTeam and I were trying to point out that the strength of the trait comes in properly leveraging it. However, Iranon insisted that we focus solely on PHI trait bonuses. So, whatever, yall. If the word leveraging isn't understood, it ain't my beef. Are you all really gonna argue that 100% of 29 isn't 29 and therefore doubling it?

@D_almighty While I used to have that same mindset, having a 40-50 turn Pacifism spike is an awesome way to push out a bunch of GP before returning to Theo or OR. That, plus having the Cristo Redentor makes late game GPP pushes a cinch to go in an out of.
 
Also, without the 'leveraging', we'd have 58GPP per turn without PHI, 87 with.

Additional GP spawned over the 100 turns in the same example: 9 With PHI (no GPP left over) and 7 without (100GPP to spare).
 
Blitz, you're correct in so far as you can get more GP points with philosophical. Iranon is saying that he feels it isn't worth it to stack philosophical and pacifism for the sake of what seems to be only a few more GP over the course of the entire game. I'll admit I haven't done the hard math on this, but obviously a Philosophical leader is going to get less benefit out of pacifism than a non-philosophical leader.

Let's say you have 10 GP points per turn.

Philosophical leader's city /w National Epic without Pacifism

x + 100%x + 100%x = 30 GP points

Philosophical leader's city /w National Epic WITH Pacifism

x + 100%x + 100%x +100%x = 40 GP points, or a 33% increase.

Non-philosophical leader would be 10 less on each; 20 GP without Pacifism, 30 GP with: a 50% increase.

I also don't really believe stacking pacifism and philosophical is worth it. Take advantage of some other religious civics! :)
 
@Iranon:But, again, why would you choose a PHI leader (or continue playing one gained randomly) unless you leverage their traits.

Even so, the bonus applies empire-wide and therefore lends itself to multiple GP farms. When 1 city pops, the others do not reset to 0. They retain their GPP and simply acquire the higher GPP requirement for the next GP.

@D_almighty: I mean, I get it. But the pacifism spike with 3 GP farms has always done wonders in my games. I don't by any means stay on it for prolonged periods of time... only enough time for my 3 GP Farms to pop a bunch of GPs, then back to (usually) OR. And the whole leveraging thing included getting Parthenon and Great library (which is what TheMeInTeam and I were originally talking about. I threw in Pacifism b/c of my little 'spikes' or whatever)

The speed at which they Pop when using multiple farms is much quicker.
 
Multiple GP farms have already been proven to be inefficient. And I'm saying leverage their traits by taking advantage of not having to use pacifism. That's still leveraging it; in fact, I would say that to use pacifism with a philosophical civ is wasteful. You get less of a bonus for using it with philosophical than you would with any other leader trait.
 
I've pondered that before. I don't know what the numbers say, but every game that I use a 'pacifism' spike with a PHI leader in conjunction with Parthenon and a slew of specialists, I feel like they're popping so friggin quick I can't keep up.

Maybe its just a mindset, but I like it :D.

I will try not utilizing the Pacifism in my next PHI game as a way of leveraging it.
 
blitzkrieg, i'm not sure which playstyle actually gets the most out of PHI. Giving a cottage economy a chance at higher levels to equalise by faster bulbs (SEs can usually do this anyway) instead of playing most of the game from behind sounds tempting, but that won't surpass FIN. So that's probably applicable to Elizabeth rather than PHI leaders in general.

I think obsolete used it to decent effect; with his playstyle FIN and ORG would provide little, expansion traits would lose their edge very quickly with only half a dozen cities or so and military traits might be unnecessary because forceful expansion isn't a priority.
While I prefer IND for that, PHI is a reasonable substitute that doesn't force you to commit to a wonderspam - useful if you find you're sharing the game with several AI wonderwhores.

I still haven't worked out everything I would like to... for example whether PHI does more for a civ with 1 big GPP farm, or one with multiple specialist cities. In the former, the National Epic automatically applies to most GPP making the increase from PHI less noticable.
In the latter, we will get a lot of waste in GPP which escalates with every specialist produced, also cutting down the effectiveness of PHI... tricky.

Nevertheless, I think the strength of PHI doesn't vary much in most established playstyles; I find it useful when adopting one where other traits are poor or when I want to play the map rather than the leader.
 
Multiple GP farms are not inefficient early on when you haven't built the NE, for example:

One city running 12 GPP/turn gives a GP at +turn: 9, 25, 50, 84
Two cities started simultaneously with same GPP: 9, 17, 34, 50

4 GPs in the same timeframe that one gp farm would have given you 3. With even more GP farms you could get your GPs even faster. If you eventually focus your GPP in one city more than others with national and world wonders/ pacifism only applying there, you will start to waste GPP in your other cities.

Being able to do this kind of thing for a longer period is one of the benefits of philosophical because you don't have to focus on running specialists for as long a period of time as you need to without the trait if you don't want to risk wasting GPP or want to pursue other ventures after a couple of GPs.
Also as others have pointed out, you're less dependant on the NE or Pacifism by far compared to non-philosophical civs giving you greater incentive to pursue other buildings/civics.
It basically increases your flexibility/effective micromanagement possibilities in this area.

Edit: I should probably also mention again the half-priced universities. Although it's a bit down on the list over most useful building discounts, discounts are always welcome. I know TMIT pointed this out but it's been largely ignored in the discussions while the relative merits of getting earlier gps have been discussed to a greater extent, so I wanted to add it to the footnotes.

Edit: fleshed out.
 
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