J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D	prosp
Rome	AD 0	30	30	30	30	30	30	30	28	28	28	27	27
A.1		95	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	8
A.2		95	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	22	7
A.3		95	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	22	0	7
A.4		95	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	21	0	6
B.1		23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	95	8
B.2		23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	94	7
B.3		23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	71	7
B.4		23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	23	70	6
Rome	AD 1	23	23	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22
C.1		22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	46	16
C.2		22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	45	15
C.3		22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	15
C.4		22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	22	21	14

Greetings catilina,

As you may know, I have been conducting my own tests on this subject. I hope to finish my tests tonight, so I'm still not quite certain of the exact method used to award the wage based prosperity bonus and penalty. Some of your conclusions are different than what I have determined so far. For instance, you "exclude the possibility that the number of workers and the actual amount of wages were determinig factors" while I (currently) consider them critical elements. However I do agree that wage changes must be anticipated the month before they are reported and that (given a constant amount of workers) one way you can get the wage bonus is by paying equal to Rome through November and then Rome+24 in December (where Rome = Rome's wages as reported in the beginning of the following January). Please let me know what were the "total wages" reported by your finance advisor for each of your test years and how many workers you had at the end of each year.

Treborius

Sorry, me again..

Brugle,

ad Sufferin' Sahara; if you are in the mood for micro-micro-managing through the first year again and assuming that my theory is correct, I suggest paying 38 Dn in AD 0. (Programmed wage increases: Aug AD 0 (34 Dn) and Dec AD 0 (36 Dn))
Or paying 100 Dn from Jan to Apr, 56 Dn in May and 0 Dn from Jun to Dec. (12*38 = 4*100 + 56 + 7*0)

I don't understand at all.

Treborius, as requested..

scenario: total wages, number of workers (Dec)
A.1: 507, 279 (short by 10 employees)
A.2: 505, 279
A.3: 452, 279
A.4: 449, 279
B.1: 640, 273 (short by 24 employees)
B.2: 637, 273
B.3: 585, 273
B.4: 583, 273
C.1: 655, 274 (short by 15 employees)
C.2: 652, 274
C.3: 600, 274
C.4: 597, 274

Btw, in all my test runs in the first year I didn't make a profit and failed to pay tribute, nevertheless I was able to reach the maximum of 8 points (excl. grand insulae and patricians' bonus).

[This message has been edited by catilina (edited 12-14-2001 @ 10:43 AM).]

Thank you Catilina,

My tests last night contradicted my hypothesis that the minimum wage was based on the average number of workers times Rome's end of year wages. Your insight that it was based on the average wage rate itself helped me to quickly find the errors in my assumptions. Catilina, congratulations on figuring this out! You are a genius!

To make it clear (hopefully) for everyone:

To avoid the wage penalty ("pay less than Rome") your average month-end wage rate over the year must at least equal Rome's wage rate at the end of the year.

To gain the wage bonus ("pay +2 Rome's wage") your average month-end wage rate over the year must exceed Rome's year-end wage rate by at least 2Dn.

The table below shows wage rates as of the end of each month. The columns for "Average" and "Rome" are as of the end of the year.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Average	Rome	Prosperity
D.1	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	60	38.0	36	+1
D.2	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	59	37.9	36	0
D.3	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36.0	36	0
D.4	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	36	35	35.9	36	-1
E.1	100	100	100	100	56	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	38.0	36	+1
E.2	100	100	100	100	55	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	37.9	36	0
E.3	100	100	100	100	32	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	36.0	36	0
E.4	100	100	100	100	31	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	35.9	36	-1

I conducted my tests in Sufferin' Sahara. At the end of the year for the E-series of tests the city mood was "pleased" even with everyone in large tents and minimal services (taxes were zero), so using this method to lower actual wages paid does seem to be a feasible strategy.

Treborius

catilina/Treborius,
Very interesting. It seems a little silly (keeping track of the average wage paid seems about as much programming effort as keeping track of the minimum wage differential), but it's good to know. (And catilina, I am not in the mood to repeat the first year of Sufferin' Sahara.)

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-14-2001 @ 04:05 PM).]

I've taken another look at my failed attempt in Sufferin' Sahara to rise the prosperity from 90 in Dec AD 10 to 100 in Jan AD 11. Although I had set wages to 100 Dn in Nov and Dec after Rome's wage increase in Oct, I reached only 99 prosperity. The city's balance was 241 Dn at the end of Dec AD 10 and -590 at the begin of Jan AD 11, no tribute was payed. The city lost less money than what was spent on construction.

In a replay of Dec AD 12 I made sure to have plenty of money all the time and indeed managed to get a 10 point prosperity rise.

Conclusions:

1. The prosperity rise of 9 is surprising because a failure to pay tribute should have resulted in a -3 penalty. Obviously, under some circumstances a tribute of 0 Dn is also considered a tribute.

2. Because only 1 point was missing, I assumed and reported in the CBC thread "Sufferin' Sahara: post-mortem" that the wage increase caused this -1 penalty (9 instead 10). I was wrong; in conformance with catilina's and Treborius' excellent explanations the 100 Dn payed in the last two months were sufficient to get the "Rome + 2" prosperity point. Instead, I strongly suspect that I suffered the penalty point for losing money, in spite of the fact that I lost less money than I spent on construction.

It seems that one penalty point is always deducted if the city makes a loss, no matter whether the loss is smaller than the construction expenses or not. (This is in conformance with the information given on "Which Way to Rome", but contrary to Caesar Alan's footnote in his article "Prosperity" on "The Appian Way")