Hi guys. I haven't posted a while in this thread that I started, but I see that it wasn't really needed to keep it going. I just got The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion and wanted to check it out before anything else and there are only so many hours in a day. It's a great game, but I'm mostly a strategy game fan. But it's very nice to go into a very convincing fantasy world if you like that kind of thing (as I do). You need a very good computer to run it though.
Back on topic of the game of the year for me (Civ4) and its minor flaws.
First about a little discussion about the consequences for the difficulty of the game. Some people think that reducing the power of forest chopping will make the game more difficult because the human player can use forest chopping better than the AI.
First of all, the suggestion to reduce the strength of forest chopping is not proposed in order to strengthen the AI but in order to bring balance between the various strategies that can be used at the start of the game. Most people agree that forest chopping is the most important worker ability to obtain at the start of the game. The arguments for that are in my first post of this thread and are repeating and further explained in some other posts in this thread (fast development, wonder building, etc.). Also, forests are seldom preserved for their health bonuses and production bonuses to tiles because the value of 45 hammers now (epic speed) is much bigger than the value of 1 hammer per turn if you choose to use the tile in your city.
This balance between various strategies is what makes a strategy game great. If one approach dominates, then the others could just as well have been left out of the game, making it a poorer game.
Now, the additional effect is that the human loses part of the advantage it has over the AI in chop rushing. Thus if you can barely win immortal with the present rules, then you might have to go back to emperor level. Is that a bad thing? Now you have an AI that gives you a challenging game while it needs less bonuses to do so. I think that is an improvement because I want a game where I feel that the AI has (as much as possible) the same rules. There are many moments in a high level game where you notice that the AI has abilities that the human player does not have. It can maintain a higher production level while having less resources and less cities. It needs this to keep up with a good human player, but the less dependent the AI is on these bonuses, the more fun the AI is as an opponent to me. (I think that my opinion of this is exactly the same as Zombie69's opinion.)
A lot of discussion about the financial trait. And a good discussion. I like the examples that atreas used to make his point and I see the value of the objections made by Zombie69. Those guys really like to discuss with one another and often come up with really good points. They never seem to agree however.
I think that Zombie69 has a good point that the reduction in strength by moving the financial bonus from 2 commerce tiles to 3 commerce tiles is felt mainly in coastal tiles and at the very important early part of the game. But I also think that atreas has a point that the organized trait might still be seriously weaker than the financial trait. The change will clearly weaken it, but will it weaken it enough?
The civic upkeep cost of a city is about 2 + 0.5 * N where N is the size of the city (based on the strategy article about civic upkeep cost in the strategy articles section).
Because some cities lack tiles that have a commerce output of 2 or more (inland cities before cottages have been developed), the organized trait will be more powerful in the very early game.
The version of financial where the output of 3+ commerce tiles is increased by 1, will not surpass the organized trait for a while because it takes a while for cottages to reach an output of 3+. A few river cottages might help though. The normal financial trait will surpass the organized trait pretty quickly.
A city of size 6 will have a civic upkeep of around 5 and thus the organized trait reduces these costs by 2.5. At size 6, a city will generally have 3 or more tiles which produce 2 or more commerce and thus the financial trait is better. At size 6, the cottages might not have developed enough to produce 3 commerce for the reduced financial trait.
In the late game, a city of size 18 has a civic upkeep of around 11 and thus the organized trait reduces these costs by 5.5.
The city can easily have something like 12 tiles that have a commerce output of 2 or higher and thus commerce is increased by 12 for the financial trait. With a 100% bonus from banks, universities etc, this bonus of 12 becomes 24. Clearly better than the 5.5 from organized.
The city will probably also still have something like 8 tiles that have a commerce output of 3 or higher. So commerce is increased by 8 for the reduced commercial trait. This bonus is again doubled by the bonuses of banks/universities so that the reduced commercial trait stiill does a lot better at 16 compared to 5.5 for the organized trait.
Inflation increases the effect of the organized trait somewhat. Inflation will however not reach 100% until the very end of the game, so the effect of the organized trait of 5.5 will not be doubled to 11. Even if it would be doubled, then it would still be inferior to both financial as well as the reduced form of financial.
. This is called "biased statistics". When I agree with Zombie (which is more often than not, unless the discussion involves somehow the word "Financial" 
) I don't make a post just to say "I agree" - on the other hand, when I disagree I just say it. That creates impressions that aren't true 
.
