Two science-related issues

[WillJ]

1) Has anyone noticed that with one-commerce cities, if you have science at 50% or above, that one commerce always goes to science, and if you have it as 40% or below, it always goes to gold? I'd like to see all the commerce collected from all the cities, and then be divided into the three areas, so that if you have, say, 60% science, 60% of the commerce (or as close as possible) actually goes to science.

2) I'd like to be able to know how many turns it will take to research all the techs that I have selected (assuming everything stays the same). This will help me carry out plans better.

 

[EddyG17]

1) what you taking about?
2) check you domestic advisor, near the science-happiness thing.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I think that does happen with communism (communal)

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by EddyG17
1) what you taking about?
2) check you domestic advisor, near the science-happiness thing.

1) I don't know how to explain it any more clearly.

2) No, I'm talking about when I have more than one tech selected. Ya know, like a path. For example, in the ancient age if the first tech I select is republic, it'll highlight all the techs leading up to republic, and it'll tell me how many turns it'll take to research the first tech in line. But it doesn't tell me how many turns till republic. (This isn't the best example, since a lot of things would change between then and the time I'm researching republic, but you get the idea...)

 

[RX2000]

Couldnt you just add up the turns in your head to get the total?

 

[Bane Star]

Originally posted by WillJ
1) I'd like to see all the commerce collected from all the cities, and then be divided into the three areas

Yes I too would like this, I have the problem when I have some cities with marketplaces and libraries with a low commerce of say 10, if I'm sitting on a 60/40 science/gold, I get 9 science and 6 gold, but if I just need 1 more gold and I switch it to 50/50, I now have 7 science and 7 gold, I've just lost out on 2 science to get that 1 more gold, better to switch to 40/60 and not lose out on the %split, but when you multiply that out by 10 cities, at different levels, you'll allways missout.

2) I'd like to be able to know how many turns it will take to research all the techs that I have selected (assuming everything stays the same).

unless you can get a very very stable society then this has no real point...also the techs have differing requirements, all of which increase, so looking at republic from the start of the game would on the average read at 200+ turns... I suppose that it is a worst case scenario... but you know that your going to build more cities, and improve them, and trade to get techs in-between... nope the only application I can see for this is the tech beyond the tech you have, and you may as well double the turns to get the basic idea of that...

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by RX2000
Couldnt you just add up the turns in your head to get the total?

Well, if I knew more than one of the numbers I could...

Originally posted by Bane Star
unless you can get a very very stable society then this has no real point...also the techs have differing requirements, all of which increase, so looking at republic from the start of the game would on the average read at 200+ turns... I suppose that it is a worst case scenario... but you know that your going to build more cities, and improve them, and trade to get techs in-between... nope the only application I can see for this is the tech beyond the tech you have, and you may as well double the turns to get the basic idea of that...

Well, I had this idea when I was researching Atomic Theory, and I wanted to know how long it'd take to get Electronics, because I needed to get there ASAP to rush the Hoover Dam with a GL, before the Indians (who were building it) could get it. In this case, I don't think it would change all that much. But you're right, doubling/tripling the current # of turns is a good estimate.

 

[Jon Shafer]

1) If they changed this then it would probably screw up how the entertainment slider worked.

2) As was already pointed out, your economy usually changes so much between 1 tech and the other that it's pointless. If it's not too much trouble you could also find out the beaker cost of all the techs then divide by your science output.

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by Trip
1) If they changed this then it would probably screw up how the entertainment slider worked.

Not as far as I know. It's quite simple really: All commerce from all cities is collected. Then it's divided up into three areas: gold, science, and luxuries. I can't think of anything wrong with it, and it'd be much better, IMO. Of course, you could still view commerce city-by-city (so that you can know how much marketplaces, universities, etc. help a certain city); it's just that if you have all one-commerce cities, and gold is at 40%, science is at 50%, and luxuries at 10%, 2/5 of the cities would produce one gold, half one science, and 1/10 one luxury. Instead of all one science.

Originally posted by Trip
2) As was already pointed out, your economy usually changes so much between 1 tech and the other that it's pointless.

Er, not really. Especially not after the ancient age.

Originally posted by Trip
If it's not too much trouble you could also find out the beaker cost of all the techs then divide by your science output.

Hey, I don't care about it that much.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by WillJ
] Not as far as I know. It's quite simple really: All commerce from all cities is collected. Then it's divided up into three areas: gold, science, and luxuries. I can't think of anything wrong with it, and it'd be much better, IMO. Of course, you could still view commerce city-by-city (so that you can know how much marketplaces, universities, etc. help a certain city); it's just that if you have all one-commerce cities, and gold is at 40%, science is at 50%, and luxuries at 10%, 2/5 of the cities would produce one gold, half one science, and 1/10 one luxury. Instead of all one science.

The luxury slider puts a % of the commerce generated by each city towards entertainment. You can't simply "pool" all the commerce together first, then dish it out that way.

Er, not really. Especially not after the ancient age.

Yeah, only if you play on tiny maps with no city improvements.
Marketplaces? Banks? Libraries? New cities? Changing tile arrangements? Wonders? A GA? Conquest?

If your commerce didn't change after the Ancient Age then you'd never get to railroads before the end of the game.

Hey, I don't care about it that much.

Then it's not important enough to worry about. I'd rather they work on the AI.

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by Trip
The luxury slider puts a % of the commerce generated by each city towards entertainment. You can't simply "pool" all the commerce together first, then dish it out that way.

Sure you can. It'd work like this: A city's commerce is distributed as it normally would, until you get to a number of commerce that can't be evenly divided into the %ages. When that happens, it balances out with the other cities. For example, if you have luxury at 10%, instead of all your one-commerce cities having no entertainment, 1/10 of them do. And that brings me to another idea: you could mix around the commerce from city to city (but the total for each city would stay the same, of course) (for all you micromanagers out there).

Originally posted by Trip
Yeah, only if you play on tiny maps with no city improvements.
Marketplaces? Banks? Libraries? New cities? Changing tile arrangements? Wonders? A GA? Conquest?

If your commerce didn't change after the Ancient Age then you'd never get to railroads before the end of the game.

Okay, let me rephrase it this way: "Er, not after the middle ages." No really, your commerce doesn't change that much from one tech to the one right ahead (or even the one right ahead of that one), besides in the early game (or if you just so happen to enter a GA, or build a wonder). Sure, it does a little, but not enough to make the estimate worthless.

Originally posted by Trip
Then it's not important enough to worry about. I'd rather they work on the AI.

Well, I'm no programming expert, but I think telling us the number of turns to research a certain tech is a lot easier than making artificial intelligence smarter. But you're right, there are certainly more important things to worry about. It was just a suggestion. But I still stand by my first idea.

 

[PurplePacifier]

WillJ, I know what you mean at your first entry about 'one-commerce cities,' but it took me a while.

I know there are some people who are OCD about management of their civs, down to the city level. But I think what you're suggesting is such a minor thing. I trust that the A.I. is doing a great job at allocating the commerce of each city into the right place.

One OCD thing I have about that game is that when you invest money into technology, towards the end at about two or one turn away from research completion, most of the time you are already spending too much on science, so you can reduce the amount of gold invested into technology at this point and still complete your research on time.

I usually check this when I have two turns left to complete my research and reduce the amount of gold into science to see if I can still complete the research in two turns. I do the same when I reach one turn to completion.

You can actually save your civ a lot of money because the game does not roll over your gold or resources.

I know others are OCD about the production in each city. The shields that a city produce gets waisted everytime a city produces more shields than what is needed to complete what it is building that will complete on the next turn. For example, if a city produces 19 shields per turn and it just needs 5 more shields to produce a riffleman, then on the next turn that riffleman gets completed but the 14 shields extra on the previous turn goes nowhere and gets waisted. So those shieds that aren't used don't get rolled over to the next thing being produced. This is an issue that someone brought up recently.

But I just leave that alone on how the game is right now. In the expansion, I hope there is roll over on every resource, like shield, food, and commerce invested in technology.

 

[WillJ]

@PurplePacifier: Pardon my ignorance, but what's OCD?

And I don't think you get what I'm saying.

Originally posted by PurplePacifier
I know there are some people who are OCD about management of their civs, down to the city level. But I think what you're suggesting is such a minor thing.

No it's not, AFAIK. If every single city in your civilization produces one commerce, and you have science set to 60%, every single commerce will go to science. If it were done the way I suggest, 60% (or very close) of the commerce would go to science. (All cities producing one commerce is an extreme example that you'd probably never encounter, but I don't think it's a minor issue in normal games. Notice that sometimes anywhere from, say, 50% to 70% science gives you the same number of turns? That's probably partly due to what I'm saying.) This is because, with the way it is now, there is a "priority" for what commerce goes into:

First: science
Then: gold
Last: luxury/happiness

And it's not just one-commerce cities, it's any time the number of commerce doesn't evenly divide into the %ages you set; I just say one-commerce cities because it's easier to understand. For example, if you set up in the domestic advisor screen 50% science and 50% gold, and there is a 7 commerce city, 4 will go to research and 3 will go to your treasury. All the time. This is not how it should be, IMO.

Originally posted by PurplePacifier
One OCD thing I have about that game is that when you invest money into technology, towards the end at about two or one turn away from research completion, most of the time you are already spending too much on science, so you can reduce the amount of gold invested into technology at this point and still complete your research on time.

I usually check this when I have two turns left to complete my research and reduce the amount of gold into science to see if I can still complete the research in two turns. I do the same when I reach one turn to completion.

You can actually save your civ a lot of money because the game does not roll over your gold or resources.

Yes, I do that all the time. But how does that relate to this thread?

 

[Qitai]

Ignore post. Read WillJ's post wrongly.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Willj- I know what you are saying, I hate it when I have 350 cities, and adjusting the science by just 10% can cause me to overspend 349 beakers towards a tech.

But you would not only be totally screwing up the whole luxury tax thing, but also you would be messing up the whole libary/marketplace thing. A library multiplies the science output of the city that has it. How are you going to do that if all the money from every city is 'pooled' together and then divided into science/tax. If a city is making 10 gold, and you have science at 70%, then 7 of that gold is multiplied by the library.

About the only semi-logical alternative I could recommend would be to have 'nation-wide' sliders for science/tax that affects all cities (what it currently is), but if you wanted to, you could go and adjust individual cities to a separate %. Like if you have a 'super-science' city, you would want that city at 100% science, but then some other cities maybe at 0% science to even out your budget.
This is probably what specialists were intended to be, but they eat all my food!

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
But you would not only be totally screwing up the whole luxury tax thing, but also you would be messing up the whole libary/marketplace thing. A library multiplies the science output of the city that has it. How are you going to do that if all the money from every city is 'pooled' together and then divided into science/tax. If a city is making 10 gold, and you have science at 70%, then 7 of that gold is multiplied by the library.

No, it'd still work, AFAIK:

What happens (in my "fantasy") is that it's all collected and distributed civ-wise, but also it is then divided among the cities. It's as close to the %ages as possible in each city, but it also makes sure that the civ-wide %ages are correct. For example, if you have 1000 commerce, and you have a 40%gold/50%sci/10%lux distribution, 400 would go to gold, 500 to science, and 100 to luxuries. If you have 200 cities of 5 commerce each, 2 commerce would go to gold in each city. In half of the cities, there'd be 3 science and no luxuries (along with the 2 gold), and in the other half, 2 science and one luxury. Or an equivalent of that. Get it? You could ideally also set the commerce one-by-one in your cities, sorta like you said (except not really %ages).

 

[Bamspeedy]

In half of the cities, there'd be 3 science and no luxuries (along with the 2 gold), and in the other half, 2 science and one luxury.

And some people would be pissed if the cities that get the 3 science are the ones that don't have a library. Or the 1 luxury goes to cities that doesn't need it. You'd get just as many (or more) frustrated people as the current system has.

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
And some people would be pissed if the cities that get the 3 science are the ones that don't have a library. Or the 1 luxury goes to cities that doesn't need it. You'd get just as many (or more) frustrated people as the current system has.

Well, that's why I'd want to be able to mix commerce around myself. I guess if we couldn't do this then it'd be best not to have the method changed.