What's up with this GNP graph..

[aimlessgun]

Flauros and Baron have these insane spikes that seem to last one turn, which nobody else seems to share. Don't think I've seen behavior like this in BTS ever...obviously not GAs, theres GA bump in the graph too for comparison. I thought it might be some civic switching thing but that doesn't really make sense either.

 

[Sephi]

AI is switching from 100% science to 100% gold. If it has a large modificator for only one of them, the total GNP changes a lot. Baron for example will have no libraries, so probably very low science %

 

[aimlessgun]

I see. Is that an efficient way to run an economy for some reason?

 

[Tholal]

I see. Is that an efficient way to run an economy for some reason?

The AI will often switch to 100% gold when it decides it needs more cash. This is most often seen by the Khazad (to get their vaults filled) and when civs get new military techs (they want the gold to upgrade their units). It usually doesn't last for more than a few turns, and aside from occasional poor timing (switching to full gold production just as you're about to finish researching an important tech), the AI seems to handle it pretty well.

 

[Sephi]

I see. Is that an efficient way to run an economy for some reason?

yeah, many experienced BTS players use it to minimize commerce lost to rounding. BUG even added two buttons just so you can easily set science to 0 and 100 for this. Of course if you plan to use gambling houses it ain't good.

 

[Ksi]

Yeah, once you have modifiers it's much more efficient to run at 100% or 0%

 

[tinstaafl]

I don't think rounding errors or current modifiers are the reasoning behind binary research. If your modifiers don't change over a period of time, running 5 turns at 0/100 and 5 at 100/0 will have the same result as running 10 turns at 50/50. Also, the empirewide rounding error should usually not exceed 1 beaker/ 1 gold per turn since bts keeps 2 digits after the decimal point.

The idea behind it is that you go 100% money when you know that you are finishing an academy/ library soon and after your modifiers change you set to 100% science because you now get more beakers for the gold that you saved up.
Another scenario where it is useful is if you are racing for a tech that you want to trade or that has a benefit for the first one to discover. By first getting enough money to then fuel deficit research you are minimizing the chance to invest heavily into the tech only to be second to get it anyways. Alphabet and liberalism in vanilla BTS are typical examples.

 

[Buckwild]

The idea behind it is that you go 100% money when you know that you are finishing an academy/ library soon and after your modifiers change you set to 100% science because you now get more beakers for the gold that you saved up.
Another scenario where it is useful is if you are racing for a tech that you want to trade or that has a benefit for the first one to discover. By first getting enough money to then fuel deficit research you are minimizing the chance to invest heavily into the tech only to be second to get it anyways. Alphabet and liberalism in vanilla BTS are typical examples.

This is correct in the reason for using a binary economy.

BTW, when I first looked at that chart, it looked like someone was gonna flat line soon.