Shields into Gold when making Wealth -- for rushing

[Khshayarsha]

When you set a city to build Wealth, given X number of shield production per turn, how do you know how much Gold that will translate into?

In the Modern Age, when your core cities are cranking out muchos shields per turn and build very efficiently, and you want to rush production in your distant, corrupt, wasteful cities, how do you calculate the value of shields in the core cities into Gold into the value of shields for rushing in the corrupt city?

One way to rush is to build Bombers and re-base them to the corrupt city, then disband on the next turn. Bomber is built for 100 shields, and you get 25 back for disbanding Bomber. So you have just thrown 75 shields down the drain.

One thing to consider is that the core city already has all the improvements it needs, and you don't actually need more units. So might as well take your high shield production from the core cities, which you're not usingfor anything else, and put it to work in a corrupt city which otherwise needs 180 turns to build Cathedral.

But if you convert that core city's shield production into Wealth, does the Gold output then have a waste of greater or lesser than 75%? OK, so let's suppose you would have to spend 180 Gold to rush that Cathedral in one turn. The core city can build Bomber in 3 turns. You need to disband 7 Bombers (and change) to get that Cathedral rushed. Can switching that core city to wealth bring in 180 Gold in 21 turns? You would have to make 8.57 Gold per turn on Wealth to equal the value of disbanding Bombers.

Which is the less wasteful method of rushing production in a corrupt city? Disbanding Bombers -- or making Wealth?

 

[MadScot]

If you don't know Economics, max( int(X/8), 1) I believe. The divisor is definitely 8, the minimum is one, I'm not 100% sure but I think it rounds down other than that.

Once you have Economics it's max( int(X/4), 1)

It's much, much more efficient to disband than to build ewealth and rush.

100spt in core = 25 gpt (with Economics) or one bomber

25g will rush 25/4=6 shields. The bomber gives 25. AND you don't have the zero-accumulated shield penalty with the disband option.

To build a market would take 100 shields, or 4 bombers, i.e. 400 core shields.

To rush a market from scratch would be 800 gold - 3200 shields of wealth, even with Economics.

 

[Bamspeedy]

The least wasteful method is to build units and disband them.

 

[Khshayarsha]

OK, I need to refine my math a little. First of all, for comparison purposes, I should divide 175 by 21 (the shield yield for 7 Bombers versus Gold earned over 21 turns), which gives 8.33 Gold earnings per turn as the break-even point.

Also, the really hot-production core cities in the Modern Age can build Bomber in only 2 turns, which would take 14 turns to build enough Bombers to disband for a Cathedral. Can these cities, set to Wealth, come up with 12.5 extra Gold each turn? If they make more Gold than that, maybe Wealth is the more efficient use of shields for rushing.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Ok, city is producing 40 shields/turn. You build a 40-shield unit to disband in another city. For that 40 shield unit, you recover 10 shields. Those 10 shields saved you (if you eventually rush the remaining shields):
10*8=80 gold before economics
10*4=40 gold after economics

You build wealth in that city: 40 shields gets you +5 gold before economics or +10 gold after economics. 10 gold can only rush 2.5 shields.

Build and disband=10 shields
Build wealth and rush= 2.5 shields

And the ratio gets even worse due to rounding. Shields to wealth rounds DOWN (but still a minimum of 1). So a city producing 7 shields/turn only gets +1 gold/turn, the same as if the city was making 1 shield/turn. For a 1 shield/turn city it doesn't really matter if you build wealth, or units to disband, the ratio is the same. But any city making 2 shields or more/turn it is better to build something. (except in some situations where you may need to balance your budget).

 

[MadScot]

Originally posted by Khshayarsha
OK, I need to refine my math a little. First of all, for comparison purposes, I should divide 175 by 21 (the shield yield for 7 Bombers versus Gold earned over 21 turns), which gives 8.33 Gold earnings per turn as the break-even point.

Also, the really hot-production core cities in the Modern Age can build Bomber in only 2 turns, which would take 14 turns to build enough Bombers to disband for a Cathedral. Can these cities, set to Wealth, come up with 12.5 extra Gold each turn? If they make more Gold than that, maybe Wealth is the more efficient use of shields for rushing.

You're using some wrong assumptions. 180 gold isn't even close to the cost to rush a cathedral.

OK, neither Bamspeedy nor I have used exactly your example, so here goes...

You want to rush a cathedral in obscenely corrupt city Farville. You have only one city which can help, Nearville, which has 52 shields per turn production.

1. Disbandment method.
You set Nearville to build bombers. Every 2 turns it builds a bomber. After 14 turns you have 7 bombers, which all fly to Farville and disband, giving you 175 shields towards the 160-shield Cathedral. It's built.

2. Wealth method
Nearville is set to wealth. You have economics, so it produces 52/4=13gpt. We'll assume there is one shiled built towards the cathedral, so you need 159*4=636 gold to rush the cathedral (with no shields it would be 160*4*2, or 1280 gold). To accumulate 636 gold at 13 gpt will take 49 turns.

Disbandment takes 14 turns; wealth takes 49. It isn't even close.

Other than the case of 1spt towns, the only other time that wealth might be remotely sensible is when the integer arithmetic favours the smaller amounts that wealth comes in.

If I were producing 99spt, and (stupidly) chose to build bombers, that would be 2 turns (still) per bomber, but I'd now get 24 gpt, which would reduce the cathedral wealth cost to *only* 26 turns.

Even with an outrageous example like that, it's still better to disband units.

if you want to calculate how much "waste" there is with each method:

Build-disband: 25% of the initial shields is added to the target city's build. So 100 shields to build a bomber, 25 goes towards the project.

Wealth. 1 gold per 4 shields is the wealth output. It takes 4 gold to buy a shield at the target city. So it takes 16 shileds of production to buy enough wealth to get one shield.

Build efficiency 25%

Wealth efficiency: 1/16 or 6%

 

[Khshayarsha]

Thanks, Bamspeedy and MadScot! That answers the question perfectly!

I have always turned to building and disbanding Bombers to get my distant cities built up, once I'm in the middle of the Modern Age. I was a little dismayed to realize I'm throwing 75 shields down the drain with each one, but hey, it could be a lot worse. Anyway, when I don't need the shields for anything else, may as well disband.

The benefit of expanding my borders on another continent makes this ploy worth it. This situation usually takes place after a massive world war when older cities have been razed, clearing out the continent, and I send Settlers there as fast as possible and need to expand my borders out pronto. Nothing like giving that new city a University on one turn and a Cathedral on the next! That's power!

 

[MadScot]

The first border expansion is important, I agree. But you only need 10 culture for that. If you rush a cathedral, next turn you'll get three culture. If you rush a uni, that's another three, IIRC, so your next culture will be 9, then 15 next turn. 3 turns to expand. But if you only rush the one building it would only mean waiting 4 turns. Is one turn worth that much production?

To get to the next expansion is 100 culture. Even if you rush build every culture building, in the most favourable, order, it will take a while:

Turn 1: Library rushed
Turn 2 : +3 culture : Univ rushed
Turn 3 : +7 culture : Temple rushed
Turn 4 : +9 culture : cathedral rushed
Turn 5 : +12 culture : Colosseum rushed
Turn 6 : +14 culture : Research lab rushed
Turn 7 on : +16 culture

Turn 3 : 10 culture - first expansion
Turn 6 : 45
Turn 10 : 109 culture - second expansion

Getting that ultraspeedy expansion is costing you huge amounts.

Personally I'd be happy with a library (first expansion in 4) and building cities such that they have borders one tile apart at that size. Any tile bordering two of your borders like that becomes yours too. Unless uncredibly sparsely settled you'll never need the second expansion to claim land.

Unless you need the culture for 100k victory or to fight off enemy borders and flips, I wouldn't bother with the extras. Now, if you want the cathedral for happiness, that's another story - but in that case, maybe don't build the science buildings?

edit: if the problem is stopping the Ai settling, it's much cheaper to block the area with units first (rather than building those 7 bombers, build 7 tanks!) - once you have claimed the area with first expansion and fill-in culture, then you can still disband the tanks if you want to In the meantime you aren't in a foot race with the AI to settle the land