Empire Growth: Survey and Estimation

[David Weldon]

It has become important to measure the growth rate of different aspects of an empire within civIII. Some attempts have been made to estimate growth rates, but the best possible path would be to simply take a survey. So here's the info I would like from any save games you have (an at as many points within the same game as you feel like providing):

Map size.
Difficulty level.
Year.
# of cities.
# of citizens.
Total income.
Income lost due to corruption.
Tech being researched.

Map type will definitely matter, as will other factors like play style and government, but again I'm just trying to get enough info to create an "average growth rate".

Most of the info above is available on your advisor screens, btw, so you don't have to do a lot of counting or anything like that.

I'll use this information to determine the following items:
Growth of Tax base (i.e. how much trade is generated at each point in time)
Growth of population
Growth of unit costs (i.e. how much to build the best unit available at each point in time)
Growth of production base (how many shields your civ creates)

I will also, in follow up posts, do some calculation and estimation for everyone's enjoyment. I expect to find that different aspects of your empire grow and dramatically different rates, thus leading to imbalance later in the game. We'll see...

P.S. I would _love_ to measure total production and production lost to waste, as well, but I don't know how to do that except to add up all the numbers for each city, and that's probably more work than most people are willing to do. If someone knows a good way to do this, please suggest it...

[David Weldon]

Here'e a first round of estimated growth for techs vs. units.

To get these numbers I assumed that on average techs take 6 turns to acquire in the Ancient Age, 5 turns in the Medieval Age, and 4 turns thereafter. I know it takes longer in the Ancient Age, but you can also trade or conquest and acquire techs faster in that age than in the others, so I feel it's a reasonable assumption. In any case, the absolute results aren't important, what matters is how units compare to techs...

The % growth plot shows the constant % growth per turn required to keep up the tech progression as described above. Since these growth rates are referred all the way back to the first turn, a very small change in % per turn can create a very large final difference. (for those who remember, I used a sliding scale to get more of a "short term" growth when I first posted these results, I changed because I don't care about determining an accurate overall number anymore, instead I just want to compare tech vs. unit costs in this plot).

The unit costs are based on the most expensive land unit available (thanks to research) at any given time. They are 8* shield cost before Economics, and 4* shield cost after economics.

We have to consider that as the size of the empire grows, more units are required to be effective. This is not reflected in the plot because it is a very subjective factor. Remember, though, that Railroads and higher movement rates allow a small force to be concentrated very quickly and therefore be more effective than a large force in Ancient Times.

The result is that tech costs (and presumably overall trade income) grow at nearly twice the rate of unit costs. If you normalize the plots so that 1 tech = 1 unit at the beginning of the game, then 1 tech = 20 units at the end of the game.

How many ever archers it takes to be effective in the early Ancient Age, I would argue that it absolutely does not take 20 times as many Modern Armor to be effective in the Modern Age. In other words, the military benefit that can be derived by directing your economy to buy units is far greater at the end of the game than it is in the beginning.

Why do we care? Well the most obvious result is that in order to have a powerful army near the end of the game (and therefore ensure victory), one should concentrate on growing their economic base and keeping up with the tech curve. If you mobilize for war and can't keep up with 4 turn techs, then you won't be able to produce as big of an army as the "peaceful" civs can buy... very counter-intuitive.

More analysis later, I want to get the plot posted and make sure it worked...