wanting to clarify some preconceptions i've had

[lymond]

Totem Pole is weird as well cause the UU for the Natives isn't an archer it does tie a bit to PRO but the Dun and the Ger are way better because they combine well with the UU of those respective civs.

Actually, the Totem Pole plus Dog is very much a reason most hate to have to face SB early game and usually why he plugs a long for a long time. Basically, it gives him a second UU. CG3 Archers/LBs out the gate - or human can go drill line. Offers some interesting strategies as well with Offensive LBs (which I've use to great affect on IMM) or just turtling early game even on Deity. SB is a tough nut to crack. Not saying Totem is top tier, but it is not certainly not bad for a building you build anyway, and I'd say it is rather synergistic with SB's style.

Yep, Ger is very synergistic for the Keshik. Dun has no direct bearing on the Gallic Warrior, although may offer the prospect of G2 Archers to tag along a the same pace. It's just that no one builds the Dun cause it sucks.

Totem Pole>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Dun

 

[TheMeInTeam]

A CG III archer in a hill city with walls will defend at over 10 str, and with drill 1 it also gets 1-2 first strikes.

You can just TOY with pre-cata stacks and honestly 5 or so archers makes it very hard for even immortal stacks with catapults to actually win the city. Granted, you can do that and more with the mali too (you get over 10 str just with walls + hill + fortify with skirmishers), but SB also gets the murder longbows with multiple CG and probably even a few drill promos after an attack or two.

 

[Quibblesome]

That UB isn't top tier but it doesn't deserve placement next to things like stele and forum

Has anyone dissed the forum yet? Its a bit of a weird UB considering neither leader is PHI. I would posit a guess that it might help transition from a Preat war into some sort of pacifism play to catch up on tech? I tend to avoid playing Rome myself so I don't know.

Dun has no direct bearing on the Gallic Warrior

....and its only now that I realise it only provides Guerilla I. Thanks for correcting me!
Also: salient point about Totem technically giving Sitting Bull a second UU.

My head is still hurting trying to fathom a purpose for the obelisk. Best I can come up with is some sort of Rameses SH => Oracle => Obelisk Great Prophet rush to grab Theology I guess? Should it live in the same "what the hell?" category as the stele?

 

[lymond]

^^^Problem with the Obelisk is that religion is just not a good play on high levels. If you are playing a casual low level religion focused game you might have fun with it, but in general it sucks.

It can have some application in OCC games. Rams is one of the top tier OCC characters and Great Prophets are actually pretty sweet settled in your Cap while running Rep in OCC games.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Nobody hated on the forum in this thread yet, but they should. Markets are situational to begin with and the bonus it provides is small and often not ideal in the cities best equipped to farm GPP.

People just forget that it sucks because the rest of rome (leader traits, UU) is pretty solid.

 

[jokulmorder]

wow so many replies! i saw only a few for a while and decided to wait a bit and then i see this!

well thanks for the feedback, i guess i can see from all the discussion that even at much higher levels (i'm guessing for the most part, i've seen lymond and TMIT on youtube before though). i guess overall i'm mostly on track with the traits, i didn't realize ORG ended up giving more effective beakers (or did you mean the gold return from the civic discount is simply strictly greater than the amount of commerce FIN gives?).

some things have surprised me though, like how some people think less of happiness, more specifically CHA (a trait i think is very strong). i've always felt that an extra +2 happiness in your cities is, with proper management, just a little less than 2 extra tiles worked. as long as you're working improved tiles, this could be an extra 8 hammers, 12 commerce, etc. obviously you will not always be getting these results due to happiness overflow and not always being able to work improved tiles, but it still seems like a strong economic trait to me (but maybe that's why i'm only an emp!) and the fact that it benefits the military too (enables HE much more consistently being one of my favorite perks).


i guess in order to improve as a player i just need to analyze my games better; i feel like most of my losses come from me making a misjudgement in how to play the game out. my most recent defeat was me being overly aggressive without a cottage site and not getting COL as fast as i would have liked, ended up with me barely being able to keep off strike with 3 cities producing wealth and one city dedicated to merchants.

 

[vranasm]

Organized is one of the weaker traits and not one of the best as many of you write here:
Civic upkeep isn't a large cost and the cheaper courthouses can be whipped anyway

You should check your F2 screen more frequently and read better. You're totally wrong with the first part of the 2nd sentence or you don't use high upkeep civics (which is similar bad play).

There is big difference if you need size 8-10 city to whip courthouse or size 4-6 city to whip courthouse.

Obviously you need courthouses in new settled cities first and ironic enough they are never big enough in the right time (you actually should build/whip courthouses in reverse order you settle cities, capital never gets one, core doesn't need for a long time, outer cities otoh...)

edit:

I will refer to my post about comparing the effect of organized x financial trait in this SG game http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10517078&postcount=195

it is actually analysis of another game I run at the same time

 

[Heathcliff]

You should check your F2 screen more frequently and read better. You're totally wrong with the first part of the 2nd sentence or you don't use high upkeep civics (which is similar bad play).

There is big difference if you need size 8-10 city to whip courthouse or size 4-6 city to whip courthouse.

Obviously you need courthouses in new settled cities first and ironic enough they are never big enough in the right time (you actually should build/whip courthouses in reverse order you settle cities, capital never gets one, core doesn't need for a long time, outer cities otoh...)

edit:

I will refer to my post about comparing the effect of organized x financial trait in this SG game http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10517078&postcount=195

it is actually analysis of another game I run at the same time

Well first you need to do your analysis over a whole game from turn one to the last turn. Which trait do I benefit most from during the whole game?
And you need to take into the aspect that advantages early are much more important than advantages late, because it can snowball you into other advantages.
Financial you benefit from early, you should start your first cottages for the capital at the latest 2000 BC.
So you have found a picture at 1555AD (where most civgames are already decided, if you are gonna win or not), that shows that organized is better than financial. But you would need to make that calculation every turn for that entire game!
Im pretty sure over the entire game you would find that financial would net you more commerce than organized.

What I meant with that the lower cost of courthouses aint that big of a deal, even if I agree that they are solid buildings in most cities. That are because they come in a timeperiod when warfare isn't a very strong option. Because at the time when you build courthouses the AI has longbows which cannot be efficiently defeated until you get cuirassiers.

Btw, your math seems wrong in the picture you posted. You need to take into the effect that lower civic cost also gives you lower inflation.

 

[Iranon]

Forums are weak (4 times the value-over-base of most UUs would be much stronger than a leader trait) but at least it's dependable. Other UBs are weak and situational, or situational to the point of being irrelevant in most games.

Regarding Organised vs. Financial: A good rule-of-thumb for much of the game is that FIN pulls ahead if 30-40% of your population works FIN-boosted tiles.
Average size 5, low-cost civics: 40%
Average size 10, low-cost civics: 30%
Average size 10, medium-cost civics: 40%
I usually struggle to achieve that given that the remainder needs to account for food, production and at least some specialists, and ORG also gives some very useful building discounts.

Lategame tips things in favour of Financial (Gold multipliers surpass inflation. Leverage potential as an economy that has commerce everywhere and rushbuys everything is very efficient and gets around annoying health trouble).

 

[Nick Carpathia]

No, lategame is stronger for ORG. Late game cottages have between 4-7 commerce, meaning +1 commerce from FIN is a lower proportional increase.

Conversely, FIN is an early-mid game trait. A 2/0/2 hamlet or riverside cottage triggers the +1c. You may think this is a +50% boost per commerce tile, but it's actually more than that.

Remember, each citizen also comes with a cost. I've heard figures that say that during the mid-game, each citizen can cost from 0.5 to 1 commerce, in city and civic maintenance. I'll need to find the source of these calculations. This means during the early-mid game, FIN can provide a 50-100% net bonus from your commerce tiles. And this is without unit maintenance for Hereditary rule garrisons.

On the other hand, ORG's benefits come in during the mid-late game. It's good, but its bonuses don't come in during the crucial early game.

 

[Iranon]

I think you're catching red herrings there. Caring about percentages instead of absolute values under given constraints has been the leading cause of bad analysis on these forums.

If FIN puts us 100 gold ahead (standardised for equal science, culture and espionage) and ORG saves 90 gold, we have an immediately useful comparison - why would we care what fraction of what intermediate thingy each is responsible for?
Lategame economies are powerful enough on their own merits that the impact of traits fades. If FIN seems to lose more, it's because it's the more visible trait... the same property that causes people to consistently overrate it.

ORG doesn't only fade in importance, it loses ground to FIN because
1) ideal lategame setups generally sport cheaper civics than ideal midgame setups
2) gold multipliers leave inflation (which multiplies ORG savings) behind
3) it can't be leveraged effectively as effectively (commerce tiles with 60%+ of one's citizenry, rushbuy everything)

*

Cost of a citizen: Costs from city maintenance, benefits from trade routes and free upkeep play into those. Fortunately, we don't need to worry about these in a trait comparison.
The bit relevant to comparing the traits is easy though: Expected pre-inflation savings on civic upkeep through ORG at Emperor+ should be

c+0.2p-1 on low-cost civics
1.25c+0.3p-1.75 on medium-cost civics

where c is your number of cities and p is your population. Rounding errors should cancel out, but I've rarely seen them work in favour of ORG... it may save around 2 gold less in practice once we have a few cities up and running.


I find ORG vastly superior in the early game when expanding or warring hard. Average city size will be kept down through new acquisitions and whipping, making the per-city savings very relevant. The discounted buildings are very useful too: cheap lighthouses can make a huge difference for otherwise marginal cities and cheap courthouses allow for cheaper recovery after abusing one's economy hard.

FIN can be ahead in the early game, but even if I'm not trying to crash my economy that usually means being too light on production for my tastes.

 

[coanda]

I've heard figures that say that during the mid-game, each citizen can cost from 0.5 to 1 commerce, in city and civic maintenance. I'll need to find the source of these calculations.

Formulas here -
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/civic_upkeep.php
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3932883&postcount=89

On Immortal/Deity difficulty and Standard sized map...
Your civic upkeep is going to increase by about 0.5 per pop (assuming you have at least 12 pop empire-wide already). Depending on the specific civics you have, it can vary a bit from there; perhaps as low as 0.3 or as high as 0.7.
A typical mid-game city's distance maintenance will increase by about 0.2-0.3 per pop... but this can vary wildly, as you might guess. It's 0 in your capital; if you have a city literally on the opposite side of the map, it might be 1.5 or more.
With 6 cities, you'll pay about 0.1 in extra maintenance in number-of-cities upkeep; half as many cities means half the upkeep, and twice as many means twice the upkeep (until you have so many that you start running into the ceiling on #-of-cities upkeep).
Then all this gets multiplied by inflation.

So add it all together, and it's around 0.5 to 1 per pop in early mid-game. 0.5 for citizens in or very near the capital with cheap civics; 1.0 for moderately distant cities with somewhat pricy civics, assuming you're early enough in the game that inflation is basically 0.