- Location
- Hell
And just like that, all our fear and dislike of it disappeared.
Cheese and Crackers...
Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original
Cheese and Crackers...
To be clear, it gives us 1 additional tech per turn, not refunds.
So a level 3 ironworks has the following effects:
.-1 econ/turn
.+1 tech/turn
.+1 wealth/turn (with market)
.+1 econ to expand econ action/city support policy [+3 eea, +2 csp total]
.-1 tech to expand econ action/city support policy [-3 eea, -2 csp total]
.change action costs
.2 forest slots [6 total]
.guild secondary (after government upgrade)
.health/pollution penalty (assumed)
.-1 econ/turn
.+1 tech/turn
.+1 wealth/turn (with market)
.+1 econ to expand econ action/city support policy [+3 eea, +2 csp total]
.-1 tech to expand econ action/city support policy [-3 eea, -2 csp total]
.change action costs
.2 forest slots [6 total]
.guild secondary (after government upgrade)
.health/pollution penalty (assumed)
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- Location
- Hell
What is the difference? We spend tech every turn anyway.
Pretty much. Now i just have to avoid going crazy thinking about what those altered actions are.
In general, I think Ironworks may have gotten a bit of a bad rep unjustifiably. In particular, they're pretty amazing if we can get a few IW2+ up.
Ironworks [Guilds] - Huge, centralized centers of iron production, these facilities make high quality iron tools cheaper and more widely available. Every facility adds +1 Econ, -1 EE, -1 Tech to the Expand Economy action. Level 2 and higher also increase the effect of Agriculture and City Support policies at the cost of additional Tech. Level 3 increases City Maintenance by 1 Econ a turn, but produces 1 Tech/turn and changes certain action costs. Each level increases City Attraction by 1.
Lets say we get up two more IW2 in addition to our IW3, which isn't that hard. That alters each Agriculture passive to +9 Econ/-4 tech per turn each, since every level above one grants Agriculture +2 econ/-1 tech. With three of those, we would generate 27 econ per turn at the net cost of 9 tech after refunds and drips (assuming we have another GP by now.)
Basically, the general trend is that, due to Ironworks providing more econ per tech for passives than it does Expand Econ, as we get more, we're incentivized to transition away from manually performing farming actions to doing it passively. This makes sense narratively, since we've kind of teched past farming being a conscious effort at that point. Expand Econ becomes an emergency farm ALL the things button. Not needing to Double Main Expand Econ every turn would save us a lot of actions.
This only gets better with IW3 due to drips helping offset the cost.
tl;dr: We really want to build Ironworks, and therefor cities, fairly tall to take advantage of Agriculture. Once we finish the Dam and Canal, this becomes a pretty viable option.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
This is fine. So long as we don't act against our values, trade missions will only import new ones compatible with them. Some of our best traits are derived from imports (The Greater Good, Wildcat Prospecting).
Whereas our recent homegrown trait was Purity.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
If we didn't have purity we likely would have failed more disease rolls this war and have even less stability.
The difference is that a tech refund will give us something like five tech per turn, while a tech drip gives us one.
This costs us three policies, which is quite expensive. It also costs us 9 tech a turn, which makes us as fragile as a china shop that's got a bull in it.
Refunds are applied to every related expenditure. Income is only applied once per turn.
As an example (not our current situation):
In this example, we have 3 city support policies. Each city support policy has a tech expenditure of 3, for a total expenditure of 9 tech.
If we have a tech income of one, we would lose 8 tech in total each turn.
If we have a tech refund of one, we would lose 6 tech in total each turn.
- Location
- Hell
Yeah all together. Pretty sure each refund only does one.
To briefly expand on my previous post, I think a good outcome to aim for would be 3 Ironworks at level 3. Net effects on Agriculture passives:
Agriculture (+13 Econ, -13 Econ Expansion, -6 Tech/turn)
Amusingly, this would actually put Expand Econ at the same level:
[sec] Expand Econ (+13 Econ, -13 Econ Expansion, -9 tech)
Expand Econ seems a lot worse, but isn't as bad as it seems due to refunds procing multiple times for each action, while costs are only refunded once. This puts them at rough parity. Thing is, we're going to have a lot more passives than actions.
For the 6 tech cost, 2 is refunded and 3 are countered by drip gained. That puts it at a net cost of... 1 tech. Okay, it gets a bit worse the more you add due to the refunds and drips not scaling, but even 2 Agri would grant 26 econ at the net cost of 7 tech.
Basically, we transition to a civ governed by tech rather than econ, which makes perfect sense considering what we're doing. I don't think this makes us any more fragile though. It just shifts what actions we need to take and means our pool of effective resources is based on two stats combined, not one.
As an added bonus, Agriculture can be left on during Mass Levy. Just something to consider.
Agriculture (+13 Econ, -13 Econ Expansion, -6 Tech/turn)
Amusingly, this would actually put Expand Econ at the same level:
[sec] Expand Econ (+13 Econ, -13 Econ Expansion, -9 tech)
Expand Econ seems a lot worse, but isn't as bad as it seems due to refunds procing multiple times for each action, while costs are only refunded once. This puts them at rough parity. Thing is, we're going to have a lot more passives than actions.
For the 6 tech cost, 2 is refunded and 3 are countered by drip gained. That puts it at a net cost of... 1 tech. Okay, it gets a bit worse the more you add due to the refunds and drips not scaling, but even 2 Agri would grant 26 econ at the net cost of 7 tech.
This is why building taller is better, since it gives drips to help counter that. More importantly, not needing to use our actions on Expand Econ every turn means we can actually take tech generating actions. Tech generating actions also seem like the exact kind of thing to be altered by IW3.
Basically, we transition to a civ governed by tech rather than econ, which makes perfect sense considering what we're doing. I don't think this makes us any more fragile though. It just shifts what actions we need to take and means our pool of effective resources is based on two stats combined, not one.
As an added bonus, Agriculture can be left on during Mass Levy. Just something to consider.
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Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
No trees, obviously some kind of hell.Hey guys. Look what I found.
I think this perfectly describes my mind set sometimes.
The first point of tech refund (all we have right now) gives us 1 point of off each Tech expenditure.
The second point of tech refund (which we are hoping to gain soonish) gives us 1 point of off each Tech expenditure of 2+.
- City Support will now cost 2 Tech.
- Each Expand Economy we use (and we typically use 2-4/turn) will cost 3 Tech.
- A Main Build Roads (which we are planning to make a recurring action) costs 2 Tech.
- Increasing Cement Products and Build Ceramic Kilns all cost 2+ Tech each. Efficient Charcoal Kilns costs 2 Tech, but only for the Secondary, not the Main.
- Aqueducts, Baths, Block Housing, and Ironworks each cost 3 Tech a secondary when build by hand.
First. No matter how tall we can realistically build, Passive Policies will still be a scarce resource. They are just useful for way too many things for it to be otherwise.
Second, you proposed using our extra actions for Tech Generating Actions. I must admit I don't know what you mean. I've looked through all the actions available, and the only ones that generate more than 1 point of tech are:
- Retraining
- Support Artisans
Yep. That is it. We really don't have any workable choices for Tech generation.
That might work if we had ways to generate Tech. Psst - we don't. Basically all of our tech is coming from either Overflow. And, efficient as Overflow may be, it is also fragile; all it takes is one faction deciding it wants to spend a bunch of culture or whatnot and poof, our Tech score is in freefall. Our only way to restore it is to convert Martial (and only generate a measly two Tech per secondary besides), or to cannibalize Wealth, spending TEN wealth per main to produce merely five Tech.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
It is interesting how almost all our stats come from overflow econ. We have focused so much on farm more and farm better that everything else comes as a side effect. Someday we will be better at making use of and managing our other stats so it doesn't seem like a house of cards on a solid table.
- Location
- Australia
@Academia Nut, why would the urban poor move to the countryside if they don't want to? They get free food in the cities.
Obviously I am mainly speaking of Support Artisans, which is entirely workable in this situation. With three level 3 cities, that's 15 wealth per turn from those marketplaces alone. Even assuming nothing changes in the stats related to this (extremely unlikely) then that goes a long way toward paying for this. In a way, this frees us from the burden of overflow since it allows us to more directly redistribute stats around the tree, skipping several steps in both directions.
Here's the problem with your analysis when it comes to ironworks. You've looked at the numbers and seen that there are stat problems related to it. There's two conclusions we can reach from this:
1) There's something we're missing
2) Ironworks are bad and we should avoid them
The problem with the second option is that it runs completely counter to history. It requires reality to say, you know what, we'd be better off not having more iron and steel. It's not worth the investment.
As things stand, there's a chance that we'll hit a tech crunch, but that's assuming nothing else changes.
Horologer
Incertae sedis
- Location
- a risen sea
Industry passive policy exists. I'm a little surprised we haven't taken it. It either helps top up Tech, or it overflows to Wealth, since Diplo, Culture, and Mysticism are usually full.
Umi-san
Procrastinating.
- Location
- ꙮ
We're disinclined to take the simple stat generators.
Converting martial doesn't sound like an awful option, if we are high.
Support Artisans comes with a chance of innovation.
Moving away from an econ-based economy is a tad odd. Econ is manpower.
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- Location
- Austria
We hate passive drips for being inefficient
Despite being on of sources of stats out of thin air.
- Location
- Hell
You still have to consider we went from one tech cost to one tech gain.
So that is two right there.
I don't have the slightest clue of what you are talking about.
That isn't quite right. Not all of our stats come from Expand Econ - half or more come from income, which we have managed to get respectably high by this point.
Other than that... I think you have it a bit backwards. The reason all of our stats come from Expand Econ isn't that Expand Econ is so great at generating stats (though it is) - it is because everything else is so terrible at it. Artisan Games makes many of our otherwise stat-positive actions expensive by one, and then our Half-Exile "Reform" doubles wealth costs on top of that; the end result is that precious little other than Expand Econ can generate stats.
Oh, sure - and all it costs is a Main action and TEN WEALTH to generate 5 points of Tech. To fill up the 10 Tech a turn we would be bleeding under your proposed policies, we would need to take two Main actions, and spend twenty Wealth. Even if you set aside the sheer extravagance of spending 20 Wealth, and the near-impossibility of finding 2 free Mains in our schedule, this would eat up our entire Wealth cap for the turn, leaving us with the inability to do any other Wealth actions at all.
This is not a viable solution by any measure.
Sure. If and when AN waves his magical GM wand and says that Ironworks stop having the mechanical problems that they have now (i.e. ruining the Expand Econ action), then we will be able to move Ironworks from the "liability" to the "asset" column in terms of mechanics. Until then, it is undeniable fact that they destabilize our stats mechanically, and there is no way to spin things that changes this.
The drip passive policies contribute one stat point per turn. This is a drop in the bucket, and basically doesn't help with mechanics because we operate on scales where spending is often in the double digits.
I'm not against Drip policies for the narrative effect, but they should be taken for the narrative, not the mechanics. Mechanically, they are too small to matter.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh good, so we have another reason to take the Armament passive policy.