Positive feedback loops accelerates your income

[Hoffmann]

You can create a positive feedback loop by using part of your gold to buy financial city improvements. Just make sure that every turn you buy a market place, bank, stock market or super highways in cities among those with the most promising trade. When you start getting more gold, buy even more financial city improvements, i.e. two, three or four. This way your income will accelerate. Not only will your income increase. The rate at which the increase happens will increase too. The underlying mechanism is similar to what happens when you create positive feedback loops in electronic circuits and control devices, for instance by using operational amplifiers. Once you approach the limit of cities that you can make improvements in, the rate will flatten out and go towards zero as your financial system reaches it's maximum size. This is similar to logistical growth, for instance as seen in biological systems where living organisms are competing for food. At this point, you have reached the maximum income that you can achieve without building more cities. It goes without saying that you should keep up building caravans and freights to increase the potential of your cities.

Another positive feedback loop that will increase your income is to buy factories and other shield production improvements and utilize them to build financial institutions, i.e. market places, banks, etc.

If you use your income to aquire or found new cities, grow them and install financial improvements, you also obtain a positive feedback effect, although in a delayed form. The limit of your growth is then determined by the size of the map and the competition with your opponents. Positive feedback may now include military units.

Of course you have to build and buy other things than financial city improvements in order to make the whole system of cities work. But as implied above, you can argue that also factories, settlers and even military units can make your income grow.

Another example of a positive feedback loop is how to make the number of settlers/engineers explode. Select a city with grass tiles and start irrigating. This requires moarchy, democracy, or similar. Start building settlers in the city and make them work the tiles around the city. If you build a supermarket in the city, this can be taken quite far, as long as there are shields enough in the city to support all the settlers. Bring the settlers/engineers to other cities and start working their tiles, build settlers in those cities and so on. Suddenly, you find yourself with an army of settlers!

Is your research lagging behind your opponents? Start researching Writing, University and Computers. Then build and buy libraries, universities and research labs. Also a positive feedback loop.

Look for weak points in your game, then use positive feedback loops to improve it.

 

[Peaster]

Hoffman: You are thinking in a good direction. You should go a step further, and ask which feedback loops are the best in various settings, with various goals. This is similar to choosing a savings account with the best interest rate. In my opinion, the best investments in Civ2 are usually a) settlers for ICS growth, and b) caravans for big trade bonuses. Temples, for example, are far worse. For more of my theory, see:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/t-169980.html

 

[Hoffmann]

You should go a step further, and ask which feedback loops are the best in various settings, with various goals. This is similar to choosing a savings account with the best interest rate. In my opinion, the best investments in Civ2 are usually a) settlers for ICS growth, and b) caravans for big trade bonuses. Temples, for example, are far worse.

When asking which feedback loop is the best, you may apply the same principle as when vectorizing a computer code, although most people are not familiar with this - You look for the part that is slowing down the code most, and improve it. Say your grand plans are mainly hampered by shortage of settlers, you build more settlers. For the time being, I am playing around with Early Landing games, in which temples are thought to be good because you want to boost the cities' populations by We Love The Day celebrations in democracy or republic, although HG will do until Railroad is discovered.

Interesting with Early Conquest games and ICS which I have also played around with. I just couldn't get the number of cities to grow fast enough. Probably because I have a tendency to space my cities too far from each other.

I thought it would be nice to get the best of both worlds, ending the game a thousand years before it was meant to and, at the same time, achieve Space Ships in what is normally considered to be the bronze age! I am trying to develop this into a form of "Pruned Infinite City Sprawl," where you let the cities grow like ICS in the beginning but later start to develop the best city locations and start pruning the smaller cities when you don't need them to produce settlers any more.

Thanks for the link!

 

[Terrapin]

Positive feedback? Here's positive feedback: Build a caravan/freight for 50s. Send it far, far away and get 1,000g+ AND 1,000+ science. Use the gold to buy 8 or more caravan/freight. Now send them far, far away... Of course, you cannot really get the massive payouts from every single caravan. But the "interest" on caravan production is much bigger than for building "financial institutions." Of course Markets and Superhighways also increase the value of trade from their cities. But Banks and Stockmarkets are pretty much never worth it.

 

[Hoffmann]

Positive feedback? Here's positive feedback: Build a caravan/freight for 50s. Send it far, far away and get 1,000g+ AND 1,000+ science. Use the gold to buy 8 or more caravan/freight. Now send them far, far away... But Banks and Stockmarkets are pretty much never worth it.

I totally agree about the caravans, it goes without saying!

In my last game, I experimented with using the "We Love The Day" celebrations in democracy to increase the number of citizens in my SSC and a Super Financial City. I noticed a problem with making the people happy to keep the celebrations going, and to keep them happy after you crank down luxuries afterwards. However, building Banks and Stockmarkets seemed to improve the "feedback" from luxuries, so that the people stayed happy. Also notice that building Super Highways do not increase the trade from ocean tiles, only from roads and railways. So Banks and Stockmarkets may be the only means available in an almost all ocean city. Why do you think that Banks and Stockmarkets are almost never worth it?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Terrapin probably runs a relatively high luxury rate. Marketplaces would therefore probably max out the luxuries in most cities. If you can get your city up to about size 8 with a marketplace (not unreasonable if you have any black hats and/or HG/CfC) you can make a few caravans and deliver them. At about size 8, the delivery bonus should be respectable, and the extra trade should boost your luxuries enough to celebrate somewhat higher.

Basically, the financial institutions are not "growth" investments, except insofar as they allow WLTPD. New cities not only provide new production, but they grow and also allow more caravans. Caravans aren't growth investments either, but their returns are so spectacular (and quick) that they are worth building. Building a financial institution is like building an engineer and putting it to sleep for 10 turns before doing anything. Building a caravan is like building an engineer, putting it to sleep for one or two turns, and then watching it split into 2 or 3 engineers.

Basically, I look at the marketplace boost of taxes as a sort of bonus next to its primary function of boosting luxuries. If the bank won't give me a greater boost, I don't build it.

 

[Peaster]

Caravans aren't growth investments either....

I agree with almost all the above, but not sure why you say this. I think any "positive feedback loop" could be called "growth", but maybe you are using "growth" to refer only to number of cities ? Even so, the spectacular returns from vans can usually pay for that too.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

What I meant was that if you build a city, the city is providing you with a constant return in shields and trade, but it is also going to grow and eventually give you more citizens above and beyond the shields and trade you originally built the city for. Building a city furthers your gameplay goals above and beyond being a form of investment.

A caravan, on the other hand, gives you the immediate bonus, and then the ongoing trade route. The traderoute doesn't change in value (except as your city grows). A financial institution is similar, except without the initial bonus.

Basically, if it were a choice between having a city that produces 5 trade (and for the sake of argument no shields) and a traderoute that produces 5 trade, in almost all circumstances the city would be preferable to the trade route, because it will eventually grow.

If you were to build a financial institution, and by doing so delay the building of a city until the financial institution made its money back, you would be out the growth the city would have produced during that time, even if the financial institution made the same basic rate of return as the new city.

Perhaps this is the best way to put it: we don't play civ to accumulate gold. We have some other goal in mind, and your stock of gold is useful only if you use it to further whatever goal you have.

If you are, instead of spending the gold to further your aims, spending the gold to get more gold, you better be getting a better return on that investment, and have something to use the gold for when you finally get it. Getting gold isn't growth, though spending it might cause some growth. When you build a caravan to deliver for gold (science may or may not be "growth" depending on your needs and goals) you are delaying an engineer (or whatever might further your goals), so you better get enough return on the caravan above its cost in order to make this delay worthwhile.

 

[Hoffmann]

OK, so building financial city improvements incurs a delay in the return of the investment, but it will still provide a positive feedback even though it is delayed. I deliberately chose the term "positive feedback" instead of "growth" because you might argue what growth is, but I want to refer to an underlying mechanism. You might say that you can use positive feedback to stimulate growth, if that is your priority.

After having read Peasters link above, I understand better what is meant by a savings account, interest and investment. It's a whole financial theory. I suppose that making an investment that returns interest is like a positive feedback. Only Peaster is keeping track of the eventual grand total. I am more concerned about creating a system that accelerates itself as a whole.

If you start building a financial city improvement every other turn or so, after a certain delay you will experience a constant acceleration of the system of cities as a whole. If you stop building financial city improvements you will experience a delay, after which the system of cities stagnates in the financial respect. This applies to other aspects of the game as well. You might also stop, say the number of settlers from growing or stagnate your research if you so desire. Also, you can improve it if this is your priority. Being conscious of the consequences and the underlying mechanism is important, delay or not.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

But Banks and Stockmarkets are pretty much never worth it.

I would qualify that. Banks are not worth it for cities under size 8 and rarely needed for cities below size 12. Above size 12 most cities will not grow to full size through celebrations without a bank. (I am assuming a luxury rate of 20%-40% here.) Stock markets are rarely worth it. I typically build only one in my science city and then only when I have nothing else to do there. A city has to be pretty big before a stock market returns anything worthwhile.

 

[Peaster]

I think we mostlly agree, that making more cities and caravans is good, whether you call it positive feedback, growth or investment. Both give you more power to accomplish your goals. But I'd clarify that I do not accumulate gold. I spend it ASAP on whatever I need the most at the time. Maybe settlers, more vans, boats or crusaders.

To me, trade is growth as much as ICS is growth. It might be interesting to play, as a comparison game, a race to 255 cities. My guess is that ICS + Trade would be at least as fast as ICS alone, with much more science, ships, etc as byproducts.

 

[Magic_gorter]

To me, trade is growth as much as ICS is growth. It might be interesting to play, as a comparison game, a race to 255 cities. My guess is that ICS + Trade would be at least as fast as ICS alone, with much more science, ships, etc as byproducts.

Sounds interesting but I think 200-225 cities might be better. Because the AI have some cities you're never able to get all 255 without capturing them and destroying the AI.

 

[Ace]

Actually, you can get all 255 cities, but it requires a little luck. You need to have respawns turned on and after you have built cities on most of the map, you start eliminating the AI civs. This is where the luck comes in, because you need to have an AI settler appear on a piece of land where it won't build a city. Either a small island with no grassland/plains hex or on a larger land mass where you can trap/surround the settler before it can build a city. Once you have done that, you can wipe out all the other AI civs and build your 255 cities. As long as one AI settler is alive, the game continues....

 

[simpeter]

He'd have to be "NON" in that case, i would think.

 

[Ace]

He'd have to be "NON" in that case, i would think.

Wrong! The settler will be of the civ that spawned it. If it was a "non" unit, it would belong to you and the game would end because there would be no AI civs left.

Remember, when civs respawn, they do not start with ready made cities. They get a settler and have to found their first city. So if you can trap an AI settler that has just respawned before it can found a city, you can continue the game and build all 255 cities while the AI is restricted to just one settler.

 

[Hoffmann]

Maybe an interesting goal for a GOTM, who can get first to 225 cities? It would be nice not to have to locate the AI civs' settlers with restarts on, although if you are filling most of the map with cities, it would be hard to avoid them... Test your ICS, ICS with trade, etc.