These two traits seem eminently comparable as they directly impact our budget. Judging from most comments and polls on these boards, Financial is widely considered the best traits while opinion is all over the place on ORG - it seems to have a small but dedicated following while a lot of players consider it weak.
I've looked into this in a few other threads... unfortunately I used some very obsolete data (civic upkeeps used to be cheaper). Here a corrected and expanded version...
***
A formula for the amount of maintenance ORG saves is a little unwieldy, but fortunately it's easily simplified to something more readable.
Let c be the number of cities, p our total population and let's assume a difficulty level of Emperor+ (on lower levels, there are small player discounts to civic upkeep).
For all low-upkeep civics we get c+0.2p-1
For all medium-upkeep civics we get 1.25c+0.3p-1.75
For the most likely high-upkeep options (Bureaucracy and Organised Religion, rest a mix of medium-cost civics) we get 1.35c+0.34p-2.02
Fortunately, the rounding errors from simplification tend to cancel out: (for each single civic maintenance cost, we get an expected -1 from rounding down twice. ORG halves this (expected error of -0.5 per civic) and rounds down again (expexted error of +/-0). So while rounding will result in different in-game results from our formulae the effects are likely to be minor and can go in either direction.
***
Now to the important question: How much will the traits do for me? Final results for the effects of the traits are rounded to the nearest integer and ordered by magnitute (without/with Bureaucracy for FIN, low/medium/high-ish civics for ORG).
I tried to use numbers that were applicable to many games at some point or other... size of individual cities doesn't matter for the calculations, only average size. I decided to go with relatively low values here since things like new conquests, whipping and recent expansions will drag the average down.
A sample cottage empire:
7 cottage cities (size 8, 6 commerce tiles each)
3 production cities (size 8, 2 commerce tiles each)
1 hybrid capital, (size 10, 6 commerce tiles)
1 GP farm (size 10, 2 commerce tiles)
FIN: 56 / 59 additional raw commerce
ORG: 29 / 43 / 48 pre-inflation maintenance saved
A specialist empire of roughly comparable size
1 hybrid capital (size 10, 6 commerce tiles)
15 miscellaneous cities (size 8, 2 commerce tiles each)
FIN: 36 / 39 additional raw commerce
ORG: 41 / 57 / 64 pre-inflation maintenance saved
***
It should be noted that larger and better developed cities make FIN relatively more attractive (as the gains are run through gold/science multipliers and there is no benefit per city, only per tile worked) while ORG becomes more attractive with small/less-developed/production-oriented cities... especially at times where we need to build some of the discounted infrastructure.
For this reason, I regard Organised a great trait for warmongers/hammer addicts (especially since all high-upkeep civics have something to do with military or production) while FIN is more geared towards the peaceful techer.
Which one is more valuable might also be map-dependent. I've heard claims that large maps favour ORG which I don't quite understand myself... the effect of both traits scale almost linearly with empire size and small maps make Bureaucracy a lot more attractive which is good for ORG.
Both traits also have special applicability on water maps... FIN because a lot of questionable tiles become semi-decent, ORG because of the lighthouse discounts and because a Great Lighthouse-fueled trade economy is likely to result in a frenzied founding of individually poor and slow-growing cities at first and inflated citiy sizes later.
After doing a direct comparison, I was surprised at how well ORG manages to keep up in terms of finance alone, considering it has non-neglegible production benefits and its benefits always apply independent of whether we abuse our economy for more troops or happiness (culture slider).
***
EDIT: The formulae for expected savings from ORG are derived from the Civic Upkeep formulae in the War Academy. Practice seems to differ from that. I've seen a single case of 2 higher and multiple up to 6 lower than the expected value. In practice, ORG will often save 2-4 less than it 'should'.
I've looked into this in a few other threads... unfortunately I used some very obsolete data (civic upkeeps used to be cheaper). Here a corrected and expanded version...
***
A formula for the amount of maintenance ORG saves is a little unwieldy, but fortunately it's easily simplified to something more readable.
Let c be the number of cities, p our total population and let's assume a difficulty level of Emperor+ (on lower levels, there are small player discounts to civic upkeep).
For all low-upkeep civics we get c+0.2p-1
For all medium-upkeep civics we get 1.25c+0.3p-1.75
For the most likely high-upkeep options (Bureaucracy and Organised Religion, rest a mix of medium-cost civics) we get 1.35c+0.34p-2.02
Fortunately, the rounding errors from simplification tend to cancel out: (for each single civic maintenance cost, we get an expected -1 from rounding down twice. ORG halves this (expected error of -0.5 per civic) and rounds down again (expexted error of +/-0). So while rounding will result in different in-game results from our formulae the effects are likely to be minor and can go in either direction.
***
Now to the important question: How much will the traits do for me? Final results for the effects of the traits are rounded to the nearest integer and ordered by magnitute (without/with Bureaucracy for FIN, low/medium/high-ish civics for ORG).
I tried to use numbers that were applicable to many games at some point or other... size of individual cities doesn't matter for the calculations, only average size. I decided to go with relatively low values here since things like new conquests, whipping and recent expansions will drag the average down.
A sample cottage empire:
7 cottage cities (size 8, 6 commerce tiles each)
3 production cities (size 8, 2 commerce tiles each)
1 hybrid capital, (size 10, 6 commerce tiles)
1 GP farm (size 10, 2 commerce tiles)
FIN: 56 / 59 additional raw commerce
ORG: 29 / 43 / 48 pre-inflation maintenance saved
A specialist empire of roughly comparable size
1 hybrid capital (size 10, 6 commerce tiles)
15 miscellaneous cities (size 8, 2 commerce tiles each)
FIN: 36 / 39 additional raw commerce
ORG: 41 / 57 / 64 pre-inflation maintenance saved
***
It should be noted that larger and better developed cities make FIN relatively more attractive (as the gains are run through gold/science multipliers and there is no benefit per city, only per tile worked) while ORG becomes more attractive with small/less-developed/production-oriented cities... especially at times where we need to build some of the discounted infrastructure.
For this reason, I regard Organised a great trait for warmongers/hammer addicts (especially since all high-upkeep civics have something to do with military or production) while FIN is more geared towards the peaceful techer.
Which one is more valuable might also be map-dependent. I've heard claims that large maps favour ORG which I don't quite understand myself... the effect of both traits scale almost linearly with empire size and small maps make Bureaucracy a lot more attractive which is good for ORG.
Both traits also have special applicability on water maps... FIN because a lot of questionable tiles become semi-decent, ORG because of the lighthouse discounts and because a Great Lighthouse-fueled trade economy is likely to result in a frenzied founding of individually poor and slow-growing cities at first and inflated citiy sizes later.
After doing a direct comparison, I was surprised at how well ORG manages to keep up in terms of finance alone, considering it has non-neglegible production benefits and its benefits always apply independent of whether we abuse our economy for more troops or happiness (culture slider).
***
EDIT: The formulae for expected savings from ORG are derived from the Civic Upkeep formulae in the War Academy. Practice seems to differ from that. I've seen a single case of 2 higher and multiple up to 6 lower than the expected value. In practice, ORG will often save 2-4 less than it 'should'.