Some Preliminary Thoughts on a Mixed Economy

[UncleJJ]

Determining whether you should build an academy or merge a science specialist is a very simple piece of maths, Shillen. The basic question is, do you have any cities without an academy generating more than 60 base commerce per turn (or likely to with a reasonable amount of the game still remaining). If yes, then build an academy there. Just inspect the base commerce output of each of your cities and make the ppropriate decision based on that rather than arbitrarily deciding one is always better.

The value of 60 is based on the assumption that you're running representation. If you're not running, or planning to run, representation, then you're better off giving an academy to any city with a base commerce output of at least 40.

Not quite right. You are treating commerce as though they were beakers. The % of the science slider also needs to be taken into account. So when running representation and with a typical 70% science slider the decision point is 60 beakers which is about 85 commerce. Similarly for the more usual universal sufferage case and a 70% slider the break even point is 40 beakers and about 57 commerce.

 

[Shillen]

Not quite right. You are treating commerce as though they were beakers. The % of the science slider also needs to be taken into account. So when running representation and with a typical 70% science slider the decision point is 60 beakers which is about 85 commerce. Similarly for the more usual universal sufferage case and a 70% slider the break even point is 40 beakers and about 57 commerce.

This is a good point that I didn't factor into my calculations. Still, early in the game the best science city generally only has a library and maybe a monastery or two in it. And you're also NOT running representation unless you built the pyramids. So a merged scientist only adds 8 beakers per turn. So even at 80% slider you only need a city to be generating 20 commerce to be better than merging that scientist. The decision point is only 80+ commerce if you're so late in the game that your city already has oxford in it. At that point you generally have size 10+ cities with printing press and free speech so your commerce skyrockets in your cottaged cities anyway. But still by the time I have oxford I'd think a little harder about whether to merge or build an academy. But pre-oxford the decision is a no-brainer to build an academy.

 

[Beamup]

Not quite right. You are treating commerce as though they were beakers. The % of the science slider also needs to be taken into account.

Since you can (and should) adjust the slider to maintain the same amount of gold, with all the extra going to science, the correct approach is indeed to ignore the setting of the slider and assume that all extra commerce is beakers.

I can't believe how often this fallacy still comes up.

 

[Shillen]

Since you can (and should) adjust the slider to maintain the same amount of gold, with all the extra going to science, the correct approach is indeed to ignore the setting of the slider and assume that all extra commerce is beakers.

I can't believe how often this fallacy still comes up.

Care to explain this better? What do you mean "extra commerce"? We're talking about base commerce, not the commerce going to science.

 

[Beamup]

Sorry, on a closer look I misunderstood. This is just about the only situation in which science slider actually does matter.