Wealth production

[mrt144]

I don't think you're getting it.

Suppose you want a Monument. You could:

a) Build it for 60 Hammers
b) Build fifteen Warriors for 600 Hammers, disband them all for 20 Gold each, then rush buy the Monument.

I promise you that the former strategy will be more effective. The only possible exception is if you're dying for a Monument in a poor city location with a bunch of Luxuries and only the city tile Hammer. But even then you're better off building seven Horsemen, punching someone in the mouth, and rushing the Monument with the spoils.

That's a completely different application of the root issue.

I'm saying that it shouldn't be more efficient to build units to disband for gold than just building gold. I don't think the answer is to make building gold more efficient, but instead making disbanding units less gold efficient.

The fact you can rushbuy anything and everything makes the opportunity cost of production a bit lacking. It's not directly related to this specific instance of imbalance though so I apologize.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

He disagrees. The opportunity cost of putting the Hammers to a productive use is too high.

When you break windows to create a job, you're taking that citizen away from doing something societally productive. The unemployed guy wins (as long as fixing windows pays better than the alternative), the people whose windows got broken lose, and society loses.

But since there's a winner, politics means that it is possible to observe these scenarios in real life even though the behavior is costly to society.

Since you're the central planner for a society in the game, you don't want to break windows.

Wait Disagreeing with it as a Strategy
OR
Disagreeing with it as a Game mechanic.

I do think that diagreeing with it as a Strategy is quite reasonable. Hammers are much better at making buildings/Wonders/Units than Gold is.

And Gold is much better at doing Diplomacy than Hammers are (by converting them to gold through wealth/disbanding)

So
Hammers->Gold is not a good Strategy
EXACTLY, it should not be a good strategy...(most of the time)
However,
Hammers->Gold
Should be a game mechanic... (especially since everything Hammers build except Wonders costs Gold maintenance... and Hammers can only be used locally)

So If a City doesn't have any building that would be worth building right now, and it you don't want to build any units, then you need something to do with those hammers.... they can't help Other buildings in other cities, so let them help gold.

However
"Building Wealth" Should be more efficient than "Building and Selling units" at getting gold
and
"Working Trading posts" Should be much more efficient than "Working Mines and Building Wealth"


Right now the problem is
If I have extra Hammers and Gold would be better for me right now, then the Best way to do it is to
Build a unit+disband it.....
That is a Better Strategy than Building Wealth
but it is Bad that the 'build +disband' is better than 'build wealth'

because.... 'Wealth' requires a tech, 'Disband' does not
and even more importantly
'Disband' is a complicated process requiring extra steps...
If all you want to do (for whatever reason) is turn Hammers to Gold
it should be simple or impossible

So Ideally "Build Wealth" would be available at the beginning of the game, but it would give equal or slightly greater efficiency than "Build+Disband"
However, once you researched Currency, Build Wealth would come out better than "Build+Disband"... but still worse than "Replace the Mine/Lumbermill with a Trading post"


I see we actually agree...

We may disagree that you should get ANY gold for disbanding a unit... I think you should because those units are significant hammer inverstments.

 

[Udey1]

agree with above. Its broken right now plain and simple. Active practice of the exploit is just using a crutch that will certainly be fixed in a patch or an expansion- its bad practice.

It will be easy to fix. one or two variable adjustments in a calculation line probably.

 

[mrt144]

Wait Disagreeing with it as a Strategy
OR
Disagreeing with it as a Game mechanic.

I do think that diagreeing with it as a Strategy is quite reasonable. Hammers are much better at making buildings/Wonders/Units than Gold is.

And Gold is much better at doing Diplomacy than Hammers are (by converting them to gold through wealth/disbanding)

So
Hammers->Gold is not a good Strategy
EXACTLY, it should not be a good strategy...(most of the time)
However,
Hammers->Gold
Should be a game mechanic... (especially since everything Hammers build except Wonders costs Gold maintenance... and Hammers can only be used locally)

So If a City doesn't have any building that would be worth building right now, and it you don't want to build any units, then you need something to do with those hammers.... they can't help Other buildings in other cities, so let them help gold.

However
"Building Wealth" Should be more efficient than "Building and Selling units" at getting gold
and
"Working Trading posts" Should be much more efficient than "Working Mines and Building Wealth"


Right now the problem is
If I have extra Hammers and Gold would be better for me right now, then the Best way to do it is to
Build a unit+disband it.....
That is a Better Strategy than Building Wealth
but it is Bad that the 'build +disband' is better than 'build wealth'

because.... 'Wealth' requires a tech, 'Disband' does not
and even more importantly
'Disband' is a complicated process requiring extra steps...
If all you want to do (for whatever reason) is turn Hammers to Gold
it should be simple or impossible

So Ideally "Build Wealth" would be available at the beginning of the game, but it would give equal or slightly greater efficiency than "Build+Disband"
However, once you researched Currency, Build Wealth would come out better than "Build+Disband"... but still worse than "Replace the Mine/Lumbermill with a Trading post"


I see we actually agree...

We may disagree that you should get ANY gold for disbanding a unit... I think you should because those units are significant hammer inverstments.

We do agree that it shouldn't be a strategically viable option, rather it should be a last resort option. A game shouldn't reward purposeful creation and destruction (semantics, I know) of a unit as a more viable option than something far simpler. As for any cash back for disbanding a unit, the mere maintenance drop should be enough of a reward and a primary motivator for such a decision.

 

[Martin Alvito]

The message still isn't getting through.

The relative balance between Wealth production and Disbands does not matter right now, because you never want to use either strategy. Which one is more efficient is totally irrelevant. Dominated strategies don't matter, and you can forget about them.

Your Hammers produce outputs far more efficiently than Gold will. Until you reach a certain point in the midgame with Wonders and SPs, you want to use your Hammers to enable you to not spend Gold on things that can be acquired through Hammers. This is because the Gold -> Hammer conversion factor is so poor. Avoiding Hammer -> Gold conversions enables you to reserve your Gold for the things you can spend it efficiently on - city-state alliances and unit upgrades. Tile purchases and rush buys are situationally useful, but are almost always a bad idea.

To give you an idea of the exceptions: If a civ is on my border and I want to prevent it from seizing a resource/luxury with Culture, I can buy that tile or, often better, a tile in between its borders and the tile I eventually want. Very early on, a Worker rush buy can pay for itself quickly if you can muster sufficient Gold for an ally and the Worker purchase.

If you ever need gold right now, there are ample sources of supply that do not require you to sacrifice your Hammers. Sell Luxuries. Sell Open Borders. Take out a loan. All are strictly more efficient than building and disbanding.

Producing Wealth or building units to disband them is shooting yourself in the foot. A 25% or even 50% mod to Wealth does not correct this until very, very late in the game. All the mod will accomplish is change which bad strategy is a more efficient way of shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[mrt144]

The message still isn't getting through.

The relative balance between Wealth production and Disbands does not matter right now, because you never want to use either strategy. Which one is more efficient is totally irrelevant. Dominated strategies don't matter, and you can forget about them.

Your Hammers produce outputs far more efficiently than Gold will. Until you reach a certain point in the midgame with Wonders and SPs, you want to use your Hammers to enable you to not spend Gold on things that can be acquired through Hammers. This is because the Gold -> Hammer conversion factor is so poor. Avoiding Hammer -> Gold conversions enables you to reserve your Gold for the things you can spend it efficiently on - city-state alliances and unit upgrades. Tile purchases and rush buys are situationally useful, but are almost always a bad idea.

To give you an idea of the exceptions: If a civ is on my border and I want to prevent it from seizing a resource/luxury with Culture, I can buy that tile or, often better, a tile in between its borders and the tile I eventually want. Very early on, a Worker rush buy can pay for itself quickly if you can muster sufficient Gold for an ally and the Worker purchase.

If you ever need gold right now, there are ample sources of supply that do not require you to sacrifice your Hammers. Sell Luxuries. Sell Open Borders. Take out a loan. All are strictly more efficient than building and disbanding.

Producing Wealth or building units to disband them is shooting yourself in the foot. A 25% or even 50% mod to Wealth does not correct this until very, very late in the game. All the mod will accomplish is change which bad strategy is a more efficient way of shooting yourself in the foot.

Saying you never want to convert hammers into gold is outside the scope of this discussion. We're making comparisons on the conversion itself and how it can be fixed.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The message still isn't getting through.

The relative balance between Wealth production and Disbands does not matter right now, because you never want to use either strategy.

We are talking about Disband v. Wealth, not Hammers v. Gold

But if you want to
Hammers do Not have a universal usefulness.
My Hammers in New York may be more worthwhile than my Hammers in Boston, because Boston has all the buildings that I want Boston to Have, and I have most/all of the units I want to have.

This is possible becauase Buildings/units Cost Gold.

So Boston's Hammers making a Unit/Building could actually be a Bad thing.

So Boston needs Something to build with its hammers that is not always Terrible.

Currently that is 'building Gold'

And We are talking about the fact that the best way to do it is the complicated way that doesn't require tech, as opposed to the simple way that does.

 

[milk steak]

Does anyone have the hammer to gold ratio for building then deleting a Worker? Scout? Warrior?

 

[Martin Alvito]

Saying you never want to convert hammers into gold is outside the scope of this discussion. We're making comparisons on the conversion itself and how it can be fixed.

No, it isn't. Elimination of dominated strategies is an elementary math proof, and you need the concept in order to be able to assess what would actually fix the problem.

If you want Wealth to be viable, you need well over 50% of your Hammers to turn into Gold. 50% is still only the Trading Post conversion factor when comparing improvements. But then Wealth starts synergizing with rush buys late, so you have to code such that Wealth doesn't get city multipliers if you don't want to obsolete Hammers.

Otherwise you get one of two outcomes: it's never viable, or it's absurdly OP late in the game. There is no middle ground.

My Hammers in New York may be more worthwhile than my Hammers in Boston, because Boston has all the buildings that I want Boston to Have, and I have most/all of the units I want to have.

But the conversion factor is so incredibly bad that you should be plowing New York's Hammer improvements into Trading Posts at that point, or Farms if you still have empty specialist slots. If the last few Hammers are wasted, you're still better off that way than if you used the Hammers to make units and disband. The math is that ugly.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Otherwise you get one of two outcomes: it's never viable, or it's absurdly OP late in the game. There is no middle ground.

Yes, there is.... it where
Hammer improvements are still the best way to Build things
and
Gold improvements is still the best way to get gold

BUT...

But not ALL hammers can be replaced with Trading posts.

Some come from the city tile, etc.

If you have a city on Gold Long Term, then you SHOULD switch all the Lumbermills+Mines for Trading Posts and Work Grassland Trading Posts instead of Hills+Farms.

So there should be something useful to do with those extra Hammers... not the Most useful thing (building units/buildings/Wonders) but a secondarily useful thing.


Right now, the BIGGEST problem is that
Hammers->Gold by dibanding units is better than building Wealth
That needs Serious fixing

You need to make sure that Wealth stays less than 1H:1G because otherwise Mills=Trading Posts.... that shouldn't happen.

2H:1G seems reasonable for when you really need the gold and if you have the tech.

But the conversion factor is so incredibly bad that you should be plowing New York's Hammer improvements into Trading Posts at that point, or Farms if you still have empty specialist slots. If the last few Hammers are wasted, you're still better off that way than if you used the Hammers to make units and disband. The math is that ugly.

I'm not saying
Mines->Gold
should be better than
Trading posts->Gold, excess Hammers Wasted

I'm saying
Trading posts->Gold, excess Hammers Wasted
is worse than
Trading posts->Gold, excess Hammers->Gold (which it SHOULD Be)

The problem is
excess Hammers->Gold
is worse than
excess Hammers->Units->Gold (which is counterintuitive, and entails stupid MM)


Due to Building+Unit maintenance, and population unhappiness, there should be reason to have cities that are on
"No Growth"
"Build Wealth" for their excess hammers.
(Those Cities would only have Trading Posts, and perhaps Academies/Landmarks/Custom Houses, and the Minimum Farms to Work.)

 

[milk steak]

FYI:

Worker - 70 hammers, 20 gold when deleted. 0.28 hammer to gold ratio. Building wealth is 0.10 hammer to gold ratio. Building and deleting workers is almost three times as effective as building wealth.

Summary: Build workers, not wealth.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Right now, the BIGGEST problem is that
Hammers->Gold by dibanding units is better than building Wealth
That needs Serious fixing

No, the problem is that both options are terrible. Which is more terrible doesn't matter if you're nuts to do either. The "I don't want more units" argument is a fallacy. If you hit that point, you are better off throwing units away to make the war machine move faster, then replacing the units with the Hammers. Capturing cities earns Gold too.

The sweet spot is around 75% with no building bonuses allowed. At that point, it can make sense to leave your Hammer improvements in place and make Wealth until you build Banks or push Rationalism. We want the option to be meaningful but not imbalanced.

You are correct that it cannot be 1:1.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

No, the problem is that both options are terrible. Which is more terrible doesn't matter if you're nuts to do either. The "I don't want more units" argument is a fallacy. If you hit that point, you are better off throwing units away to make the war machine move faster, then replacing the units with the Hammers. Capturing cities earns Gold too.

The sweet spot is around 75% with no building bonuses allowed. At that point, it can make sense to leave your Hammer improvements in place and make Wealth until you build Banks or push Rationalism. We want the option to be meaningful but not imbalanced.

You are correct that it cannot be 1:1.

Throwing units into the war machine has diplomatic consequences.

It should be a Rarely used option.

When used it should be either
1. Very short term
or
2. All Hammer Improvements replaced with Trading posts

And the fact is it Should be an option to do Something useful with Excess hammers besides Buildings/Units.

 

[Chieron]

Elimination of dominated strategies is an elementary math proof, and you need the concept in order to be able to assess what would actually fix the problem.

If you want Wealth to be viable, you need well over 50% of your Hammers to turn into Gold. 50% is still only the Trading Post conversion factor when comparing improvements. But then Wealth starts synergizing with rush buys late, so you have to code such that Wealth doesn't get city multipliers if you don't want to obsolete Hammers.

Otherwise you get one of two outcomes: it's never viable, or it's absurdly OP late in the game. There is no middle ground.

The point is, wealth should never really be viable in the long run, because building stuff directly is the way it's supposed to be done. However, there are situations, where every bit of gold will count and no external source is available, and plowing mines in favor of trading posts will not be done in a single turn either.
The fact, that the production->gold conversion is more efficient with the unit disbanding strategy, is a real problem, not just a dominated strategy.
Maybe having wealth converting 50% of raw production into raw gold (thus using gold multipliers) could be viable. - and fail gold from wonders could be the same rate.

The power/use of wealth is just some flexibility, same for rush buy. It's not supposed to be the leading strategy for your empire, but for production->gold conversion. But it is not, which is the problem here, no maths needed.

 

[_hero_]

Yeah this needs to be fixed. Even if doing either is "nuts" Wealth doesn't serve it's limited purpose in the game because of reasons stated already. If wealth serves no purpose, than why is it in the game?