shield/beakers ratio

I wonder how much do you rate shields and beakers compared to each other. It occurs very often to me to wonder if it is favorable to build a courthouse or a factory in some city and I cannot estimate properly when the investment is going to pay off.

Courthouses do not make a lot of sense in core cities, but factories do, if the city is producing a lot of shields. So, I do not think that this is actually a trade off which you have to do often. Since factories increase your shield production by 1.5, factories usually pay off after 2x the turns it takes to be built.

But shields and beakers, the question of balance keeps arising too often and is not that wide. Assuming reasonable circumstances (somewhere on the end of 2nd era, beginning of 3rd, no special need or lack of need for shileds in the cities, reasonable science balance in the game etc), how much do you value one to another? Obviously, we are building or going to build mil units in the city, not wealth. In wealth, calculating is simple. From my experience, I would say that I have reached the conclusion that a single shield is worth somewhere between 2.5 and 3 commerce, but I would not be surprised if my instict has lead me to a completely wrong conclusion....
In case of militaryunits, I would say that it far exceed 2.5 or 3 commerce. And the reason is simple: military units heal, and stacks are overpowered.
Imagine you have an army to invade the enemy which is just strong enough to do the job. After the war, you will have almost no army left. If you now increase the army at the beginning, you will have much more units left at the end of the war and they will be able to heal.

Take a knight with 1/4 HP as an example. As a fighter, that is basically useless, but through healing it will have 4/4 in three rounds. Basically, a knight which costs 70 shields and which has the ability to heal 1/4 of its HP per turn, will have some 'implicit' shield production of about 23 per turn. In the meantime, through fighting, these units will give you more land, resources and gold, as well as technologies, if you demand them for peace.

On such higher difficulties, you would be using most of your commerce on teching. However, you can't turn shields into beakers, so what other ways do we have of calculating such ratio?

You can by building libraries & universities. You know how much they cost in shields and their maintenance, and you know the cost of all the techs.
Since libraries & universities give 50% higher science output, you can then calculate the beakers you get per shield.

Next to this, we can use our gold to upgrade units, which is a 3:1 ratio without Leonardo's Workshop. Given that on higher difficulties, you usually aren't able to obtain this GW on larger maps until far later in the game, I think using a 3:1 ratio is fair. Yes, this still doesn't turn beakers into shields. But we can however allocate gold from our treasure to such upgrades, rather than them being turned into beakers. So this would give a beaker to shield value ratio of 1:3.

We can also use gold to hurry production if we need money for it. And on higher difficulties, we should be using some of our treasury on it. We do need to be in the right government however. Especially when playing as agricultural civs, I use quite some of my gold to pay for aquaducts. I also use it for settlers now and then. Just like with upgrading units; yes, this doesnt turn beakers into shields. But it does allocate gold from your treasury towards shields, which is pretty much the same. This gives a beaker to shield value ratio of 1:4.
If you are cash rushing on turn 1, you pay 8x the shield cost of the unit or improvement, so then you would get another value and there might be a reason why that change was made. However, even then the exchange is not really 1:4 or 1:3, since you often have excess shields.

Consider for example a city producing a horseman, which costs 30 shields, with 9 spt. If you rush the unit when you have 18 shields, you pay 12*4=48 gold. However, you would actually have used 36 shields to produce the horseman, with 6 shields wasted. So you actually save 18 shields, and you are paying ~ 2.67 gold per shield instead of 4.

Exactly. Let's take a closer look at the space race victory: The space ship parts can be built easily the turn you finish the required tech. You just need to start the pre-build early enough. So production (shields) are not the problem. The bottleneck for a space victory is the speed with which you can get all the techs. --> Beakers are much more important than shields.
But there is a "cap off point": at one point you will reach 4-turn research, and then any additional beakers don't do anything anymore! They are just completely worthless. So even during the same game, at different points, beakers can be most important or completely worthless...

No one doubts that faster technology might at times be better than having more shields. OP asked for some kind of exchange rate to help in the decision making. Refering to cases in which you simply know that you do not need one of the two does not really help, because in that case you do now have to make any decision, since you do not have to give anything up. In your example, you might have no problems with getting the shields you need, but you will still need shields, and beakers for tech. How many shields are the space parts? 3000-4000? And how many beakers do you need for the technologies? It depends on the difficulty, but they are certainly several thousand.
 
Courthouses do not make a lot of sense in core cities, but factories do, if the city is producing a lot of shields. So, I do not think that this is actually a trade off which you have to do often. Since factories increase your shield production by 1.5, factories usually pay off after 2x the turns it takes to be built.
I didnt speak about core, medium or corrupted cities specificaly. The percentage thinking (1.5 so 2xrounds) does not work here. I know when I am getting the shields back, but this is the least important parameter. The factory is going to cost me 3 gpt and offer me for example 3 shields for the next 200 rounds. I know I will get the shields back in 26 rounds, but I do not know when I am going-if ever-to get the 3*26 commerce I wasted during that time back, unless I know the shield-commerce ratio. Similar examples arise with courthouses since they offer both shields and commerce. In order to calculate the full payoff, I need to know if my action offers a long term benefit and how big this one is.
In case of militaryunits, I would say that it far exceed 2.5 or 3 commerce. And the reason is simple: military units heal, and stacks are overpowered.
Imagine you have an army to invade the enemy which is just strong enough to do the job. After the war, you will have almost no army left. If you now increase the army at the beginning, you will have much more units left at the end of the war and they will be able to heal.

Take a knight with 1/4 HP as an example. As a fighter, that is basically useless, but through healing it will have 4/4 in three rounds. Basically, a knight which costs 70 shields and which has the ability to heal 1/4 of its HP per turn, will have some 'implicit' shield production of about 23 per turn. In the meantime, through fighting, these units will give you more land, resources and gold, as well as technologies, if you demand them for peace.
That is one point of view, but science-and thus commerce-allows you to upgrade those units or build better ones from scrach. Shields give you more troops, commerce give you better troops. And unless you are under communism, you do in fact pay for those "healable and renewable" military units in all realistic senarios. They are not free.
You can by building libraries & universities. You know how much they cost in shields and their maintenance, and you know the cost of all the techs.
Since libraries & universities give 50% higher science output, you can then calculate the beakers you get per shield.
The guy with the difficult name is trying to formalize the balance somehow. This is not the way to do so, because building libraries is an obviously favourable and non repeatable action. Just because 1 shield can offer 30 or 500 beakers during the game, it doesnt mean that a shield equals to 30 beakers. It only offers the information that 1 shield is worth less than 30 beakers because otherwise we wouldnt be building libraries in uncorrupted cities. With the same logic, wealth suggests that 1 shield is worth 0.5 commerce. This is obviously not true, everyone knows that building wealth (I mean RANDOMLY everywhere, not in specific situations) is not a favourable action. The only information that comes from here is that a shield is worth more than 0.5 commerce, otherwise we would be building wealth everywhere. His logic is to study more controversial situations that seem to offer reasonable exchanges like the unit upgrade, where there is a debate about whether it is worth the cost and so they stand closer to the truth.
No one doubts that faster technology might at times be better than having more shields. OP asked for some kind of exchange rate to help in the decision making. Refering to cases in which you simply know that you do not need one of the two does not really help, because in that case you do now have to make any decision, since you do not have to give anything up. In your example, you might have no problems with getting the shields you need, but you will still need shields, and beakers for tech. How many shields are the space parts? 3000-4000? And how many beakers do you need for the technologies? It depends on the difficulty, but they are certainly several thousand.
So true this one is...many previous answers in the thread here do not comprehend that and so do not offer much in the discussion.
 
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I didnt speak about core, medium or corrupted cities specificaly. The percentage thinking (1.5 so 2xrounds) does not work here. I know when I am getting the shields back, but this is the least important parameter. The factory is going to cost me 3 gpt and offer me for example 3 shields for the next 200 rounds. I know I will get the shields back in 26 rounds, but I do not know when I am going-if ever-to get the 3*26 commerce I wasted during that time back, unless I know the shield-commerce ratio. Similar examples arise with courthouses since they offer both shields and commerce. In order to calculate the full payoff, I need to know if my action offers a long term benefit and how big this one is.

Now I understand. Thanks!

That is one point of view, but science-and thus commerce-allows you to upgrade those units or build better ones from scrach. Shields give you more troops, commerce give you better troops. And unless you are under communism, you do in fact pay for those "healable and renewable" military units in all realistic senarios. They are not free.

I think unit support which makes you win the war/game is the best investment. Also, I was not just talking about shields giving you more troops, but also basically saying troops give you more shields, and destroy your enemies shields and commerce. Furthermore, you need resources for units and luxuries give you more happy faces and therefore money, so early conquest pays off really well in my experience.

The guy with the difficult name is trying to formalize the balance somehow. This is not the way to do so, because building libraries is an obviously favourable and non repeatable action. Just because 1 shield can offer 30 or 500 beakers during the game, it doesnt mean that a shield equals to 30 beakers. It only offers the information that 1 shield is worth less than 30 beakers because otherwise we wouldnt be building libraries in uncorrupted cities. With the same logic, wealth suggests that 1 shield is worth 0.5 commerce. This is obviously not true, everyone knows that building wealth (I mean RANDOMLY everywhere, not in specific situations) is not a favourable action. The only information that comes from here is that a shield is worth more than 0.5 commerce, otherwise we would be building wealth everywhere. His logic is to study more controversial situations that seem to offer reasonable exchanges like the unit upgrade, where there is a debate about whether it is worth the cost and so they stand closer to the truth.

It is still a way to turn shields into commerce. Look at it this way.
The question at hand is basically what the ratio of shields-to-commerce is when playing a game from start in 4000 BC to finish and we play optimally and win in the best way.
If you know everything about the game beforehand and then calculate the optimal path to victory, you might end up with something like you need
60000 commerce and 30000 shields throughout the whole game. In that case, your desired ratio would be 2:1 and playing optimally would require you to be close to that. The library will always change that ratio throughout the game, and it is not always a given that building a library is, for example, better than building military units. On the other hand, libraries also shorten the total game span, since you have more turns in which you produce shields and might not end up needing them, if you tech too slowly before getting new improvements/units.
ratio.

With regards to your initial question, there are demographics in the game when you press F11, which show you the number of shields you are producing ("manufacured goods") and commerce (gnp). This two will basically you give you the ratio as of now. If you think that your ratio in the game is right now not optimal, you can compare your current ratio with the ratio of your decision at question and maybe that may help. I know that it still does not answer your question, which ratio actually might be optimal. However, I think that for most decisions it is more important what else I could produce for these shields, and there the direct shields-to-commerce-ratio is not that important.
 
With regards to your initial question, there are demographics in the game when you press F11, which show you the number of shields you are producing ("manufacured goods") and commerce (gnp). This two will basically you give you the ratio as of now. If you think that your ratio in the game is right now not optimal, you can compare your current ratio with the ratio of your decision at question and maybe that may help. I know that it still does not answer your question, which ratio actually might be optimal. However, I think that for most decisions it is more important what else I could produce for these shields, and there the direct shields-to-commerce-ratio is not that important.
manufactured goods does not include corrupt shields. gnp does include corrupt commerce, but does not include taxmen or scientists.
 
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