So I've been thinking about the interplay between Econ and Econ Slots. As a thread we've mostly been focused on things in terms of action costs, which makes a ton of sense because actions are our main constraint in the short run. But there is another way of thinking about things. After all nearly everything we do relies upon Econ - it is the driver of our economy, not surprisingly.
In the past we expanded our Economy in a pretty simple way - we'd use up Econ Slots generating Econ then found new settlements to get more Econ Slots. This is good and all but we're running up against the limits of expanding our territory - while we can certainly expand into the eastern hills more, or into the northern plains, both areas have issues with defending from nomads or other civilizations as well as logistical issues. But with the advent of our True City we've found more ways to generate Econ Slots. I wanted to analyze the current situation and see if building vertical was viable, or in other words whether we could generate enough Econ/Econ Slots to not have to found New Settlements.
I've come up with a new model that I'm calling Long Run Econ, or LRE for short. The main idea behind LRE is that an Econ Slot is the same thing as Econ in the long run. This is because it is very cheap to switch between the two - it costs a single secondary Expand Econ to turn two Econ Slots into Econ, and a single secondary More Boats turns two Econ into two Econ Slots (if you're willing to wait a turn, which we are because this is LONG run Econ) (it also gets one of those Econ back in the long run).
The LRE of an action is thus simply adding the amount of Econ and Econ Slots generated by that action (including the assumption that we'll have one True City while doing that action) and then subtracting the amount of Econ and Econ Slots that the action cost. For example, Expand Econ generates two Econ and costs two Econ Slots so its LRE is 0.
There's no penalty for delayed gains, we're considering the long run here. All other stats are totally ignored by LRE. This is a model that only cares about Econ - not saying those other stats aren't useful, they very much are, I'm just trying to get at other things with this. While it IS possible for other stats to overflow into Econ, by AN that overflow costs Econ Slots and thus doesn't change LRE.
The general view we should have is that in the long run we probably want to be neutral to slightly positive on LRE. Why? Well too much LRE would either lead to too many Econ Slots (which would kill our True City) or it would lead to overflowing Econ. Which is fine until you consider that all of our other stats are getting close/at overflow and they will probably only get more full as we take advantage of Centre of Trade. So we need to worry about overflowing into Marital. Still this is obviously better than going too low on LRE which would strangle our Economy if we couldn't raise it.
With all that said, here are our actions which have negative LRE (assuming one True City, not considering double Mains - not sure exactly how those would work with True City):
{M} Art Patronage: -1
{M} Build Chariots: -1
{M} Build Wall: -1
{M} Expand Holy Site: -1
{M} Expand Snail Cultivation: -1
{S} and {M} Expand Vineyard: -1
{M} Expand Warriors: -1
{M} Improve Annual Festival: -1
Here are our actions which have positive LRE:
New Settlement: Variable. Seems like a +4 for {M} in the low productivity areas we can currently expand to.
{S} or {M} Black Soil: +1. It's possible more Econ Slots are hidden in "additional effects", which would make this better.
{M} Expand Forest: +1
{S} More Boats: +1
{M} More Boats +2
Aqueducts: +2 and +1 for 4 progress and 6 progress Aqueducts respectively
Dam: Unknown, likely to be positive with Chinampas and better waterflow for current farming, although it probably depends on where we put it.
The actions involving colonies are probably positive LRE but hard to tell how they interact with True City:
Found Colony, Trading Post, March: +1?
Integrate March: Unknown, but probably high
Support Subordinate: 1 for {S}, 0 for {M}?
Analysis: Not too many things are LRE negative honestly! Unfortunately we have been/will be doing things like Vineyards, Festival, and Snails which are negative LRE. The positive LRE action that is the cheapest action wise is obviously New Settlement, but we DO have plenty of other options if we don't want to expand too much further, with More Boats and Black Soil the cheapest choices action wise (and if you think Black Soil is hiding Econ slots it is the very best, which I think is quite possible). In the short run adding a settlement in the Eastern Hills or Blackriver makes sense if we get too low on LRE and don't want to spend the actions on more expensive items, but in the long run I think it is very possible to keep our economy rolling great without expansion as long as we remember to do some of these LRE positive actions every now and then.
TLDR: As long as we remember to do More Boats, Black Soil, cheap Aqueducts, and {M} Expand Forest every now and then, we do NOT have to build more settlements in the long run to keep our economy rolling. In the short run, use Expand Economy to turn Econ Slots into Econ, use More Boats to turn Econ into Econ Slots (with some delay).
