Perhaps I'm just getting old and set in my ways...

I never enable the slavery civic. In fact, if I think about it I think I can say that I've never sacrificed population to complete a project in ANY civ version.

Slavery is probably the single most terrible thing humanity has EVER done. That it has been effectively eliminated from modern society is the one true sign of our progress as a species. (I'm just soapboxing, not looking for a debate here.)

NOW...having said all that, I'm always looking to improve my Civ skills. As I prowl these forums I see numerous references to 'the whip'. Perhaps it's time that I stopped allowing my social conscience to interfere with my mad gaming. :)

Other than emergency city defense (drafting or rush defensive structuring), what are the upsides to slavery/whipping? I've never been that comfortable with losing population and I understand there is a happiness penalty (city/civ wide?) Is it worth it?

Convince me that slavery (in a gaming sense) is a good thing.

Thanks,
B

I'm also curious about this...is whipping more effective when you're at the unhappiness/unhealthiness cap, or do you whip before you get to the unhappiness/unhealthiness cap?

Is it more useful on harder difficulties? I haven't really found it necessary on noble. Maybe with organized religion and a forge it starts cranking out the buildings.

I need to do some testing on this, but my instinct tells me that dead people don't produce any hammers.

Slavery in civ is a good thing; it gives instant hammer boost and population regrows (unlike forests).
Slavery in the Real World is a bad thing and you won't find many people disagreeing with that.
I can understand your reluctance when it comes to slavery in Civ; I find the same real world repugnance when it comes to nukes (never built one, don't think I ever will).

It's only a game. If Disney made the game they wouldn't have made that a usable civic, and they wouldn't have let people go into facism etc. etc. Interesting thought, and you can certainly play "humane" themed games and just do "nice" things, but it's only a game.

I think.

IF you play a spiritual civ, you lose nothing by switching to it. Also a lot of experienced players on this forum playing high levels go immediately into slavery upon discovering bronze working.

A few advantages I can think up:
* Enemy units approaching, you need a military unit right now. You can lose the whole city, or you can whip up an archer to save the day. The poor whipped sods at least become heroes for the rest.
* It allows cities with good food income but bad production to produce stuff. You whip some citizens for whatever, they grow back soon enough.
* Continuing last point, you can turn a city with granary, forge, globe theatre and good (great) food income into a production powerhouse. Globe theatre means no unhappiness, ever. Forge give better gains from whip. And granary and food income means citizens grow fast back.
* Yes, it is not needed on low difficulties. But the pros use it. Im not a pro, so I use it too rarely.
* Cities that are just growing (and will soon hit happiness limit) can now have a purpose instead of just going into unhealthiness/unhappiness. Whip stuff you need. Then they can grow again, unhappiness might even be gone when they get big again.
* This one is very viable through the entire game (at least for war-minded): When you capture a (big) enemy city, it will very often have 10 unhappy people or more. It will quickly starve down to small size. Instead of just letting those people (enemies!) starve to death you whip them to make some needed stuff (culture in the city, units for war)

A historical view: When invaded by Nazi Germany, many workers (and "workers") in the Soviet Union were literally worked to death. Their sacrifice, however, made a lot of war-material which was instrumental in stopping the Nazis. Mabye the end did justify the means here.

I need to do some testing on this, but my instinct tells me that dead people don't produce any hammers.

On the contrary... they produce at least 30 hammers apiece, often more than they could produce where they allowed to live.

Slavery allows you to convert food to hammers in large quantities at competitive rates. A mined grassland hill is the most efficient commonly available tile for converting food into hammers. It allows you to convert a single surplus food into 3 hammers. It also costs you 1 population-turn in performing the conversion. There are many other tiles which allow 1:2 or 2:4 conversion rates and also consume a single population turn. The key thing about most of these methods is they are very limited in the quantity of surplus food that can be converted into hammers. If you only have 1 grassland hill available, any surplus food above 1 must be converted at a less efficient rate.

With slavery, you get a fairly competitive conversion rate, up to 1:3. Additionally, you can more realistically convert very large food surpluses into hammers without reducing the rate of return as much. Lastly, because you don't have to spend as many population-turns in the production of the hammers (assuming you had a large food surplus), you can actually spend more time working cottages and producing commerce.

Slavery is perfect for commerce cities. Through its use you achieve a very good balance between commerce and industrial output. Afterall, a commerce city without a library, university, bank, etc. is of considerably less value. Through slavery, you can get those improvements much quicker than you would if you just worked your cottages, and you generate more commerce during their acquisition than if you worked mines in favor of cottages.

I think whipping is the single most effective and efficient way of producing an army capable of competing with a higher level AI. It is not necessary on levels up to and including Noble(maybe Prince), but once you get into Monarch and above, it is almost necessary. It is certainly possible to win a game without whipping, but much harder, especially in the early parts of the game, and especially on faster speeds(I usually play Epic so this is just a guess).

I think you should check out this link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=159109

Zombie69 wrote an article about extreme micromanagement and one of the sections in this article is about the proper and efficent use of "the whip". It can be a little hard to follow, but it is a good read.

Interesting stuff. Thanks much for the input.

I've been playing on noble pretty steadily, though when the original C4 released I played a game or two as much as two levels higher than noble. (sorry, don't have it handy and can't remember the tiers off the top of my head.)

I'll definitely take a look at "the whip" in my next game though.

B

I'm playing a game on Prince as Korea on an archipelago map. One of my cities has access to two fish resources but no hammers (except the one on its' starting tile). This is perhaps the most ideal situation to use the whip. I was whipping stuff complete and then having the city grow back the next turn! (Granary in the city, whipped that first of course).

Well you can play this as a RPG or you can play this as a sort of chess game. Do you feel guilty about killing horses when your tower takes one of the horses of your opponent?

Ofcourse not.

But this game can immerse you so far you feel connected to your people and your cities, and get into a bloody reconquest of one of your cities while actually you might better off without it. In that perspective I can see you don't like the whip.

In every other perspective, it's a really powerful tool to surpass the AI production bonusses on higher levels. Monarch is the last playing level I could beat without reverting to chopping almost every tree in sight and repetitive whipping of buildings and units.

I stay on Slavery until I have banks in all cities. After that I stop whipping and let them grow into commerce and production centers.


I try to whip as much pop as possible, because the penalty stays the same, and because you've whipped 2 instead of 1 pop for axemen, means it takes about ten turns to grow back to that size. It's the perpetuum mobile of slavery.

I play prince and generally war-monger the early game, and from my experience you don't need slavery to out-muscle the AI. (In fact, I generally don't use slavery at all.)

What I find so amusing is that I avoid slavery in the game-not because I find it morally repugnant (I do, btw, in Real Life) but because I find it useless. This is why I made slavery boost the hammer output of mines and quarries. Now at least it is genuinely USEFULL!!!

Aussie_Lurker.

What I find so amusing is that I avoid slavery in the game-not because I find it morally repugnant (I do, btw, in Real Life) but because I find it useless. This is why I made slavery boost the hammer output of mines and quarries. Now at least it is genuinely USEFULL!!!

Aussie_Lurker.

dont u find it bad that u find the most overpowered thing in the entire game "useless?" maybe u need to check ur playing habits.

I didnt use the whip myself in my first games either... then, when i tried (Monarch and above), it was so AMAZING that i cant live without it anymore. There are dozens of brilliant threads that explain why slavery is so pwerful, but here is a simple example:

- A recently founded city, say yout 10th city. Size 3, a nice food resource (say corn), a farmed floodplains (or pig, cow, etc) and a hills/plains mine. Pretty standard, right? You have +6 food surplus, and the mine gives you 4 hammers per turn.

- Lets say food is 25/26, or anything above 20, so you will grow in 1 turn.

- Now you whip 1 pop. You get 30 hammers (37 if there is a forge). With a granary, in 3 turns (do the math, or read my article (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=178491) about it) you will be with 3 pop again, and with the SAME 25/26 food.

- If you instead dont use whip, in 3 turns you will only produce 12 hammers from the mine.

- Thats 30 vs 12 hammers. Whip is so powerful that now i realize im LOSING hammers if i dont use it. In this example, losing 18, or 25 if i have a forge.

- As for the hapiness penalty, if this is your 10th (or 12th, or 8th), hapiness cap of your empire is much higher, so you dont have any penalty at all.

Thats why in my recent games, i always whip the first 5 or 6 buildings of every city after my 6th. Its great for military, or for basic infrasctructure of recently captured cities (theaters, libraries, etc).

Hope this simple example helped. Any input or corrections are welcome

Whip for hapiness buildings when you reached the hapiness cap, one of my favorite...

Whipping out conquered cities is also very great. They're unhappy and will lose pop every turn until they get to a standstill. Whip courthouses, theatres, libraries, granaries, barracks, and try to whip them in ONE turn (using the building queue and altering between buildings), and let them complete in the next turns.

If they're going to die anyway, let them do something useful while dying.

Whip for hapiness buildings when you reached the hapiness cap, one of my favorite...

same for me!

almost everything has been said here,
but my 2 cents (not an optimal way to do it, mind you):
1) think about your commerce city, 1 hammer/turn won't give you a library, a granary, a university, ...
Let your city grow to size 2 while building the granary, then whip it. The city will then slowly regrow to size 2, while you build a library.It will be size 2, still 1 hammer, then size 3 fast (thanks to the granary), still 1 hammer/turn, then size 4, still 1 hammer. Your library will have some 30 hammers done, so you can whip it. You're size 2, growing to 3 in 1 or 2 turns. All this time you have worked 1,2 or 3 cottages, so one is a town, the other a village, the third is a hamlet.
So you are size 3 in the same time you would have been without the whip + you have the granary you would just have finished, and the library you wouldn't even have started.
2) think about building an army.
You can only build things for which you have the tech and the ressource.
But you can work food tiles even if you don't!
So at the exact moment when you have both the tech and the ressource you can whip (wait one turn if needed) those troops!
This way i have 3 catapults one turn after i discover construction. Can you beat that?
That's what i call rushing!

If you whip every 10 turns, your city's average production will rise by 3:hammers:/turn, for a cost of (for a size-2 city) 1.2:food:/turn (2.4:food: w/o granary), and a sustained 1:mad: which will lower your population limit by 1, and makes it just as if you had an actual citizen doing all of this work.

That basicly works out to be equal to having a citizen working on a mined hill, except that you don't need a hill or a mine. In the early game, getting extra production for zero development cost is simply amazing. Getting this production bonus requires 0 workers and is suitable to all city-locations.

If you need :hammers:, there is no reason not to :sad::hammers::whipped:.

cabert, I agree with you about commerce cities, but I have something to add. Since I'm not going to be able to work all the tiles of the city from the start, I find it usefull to build some farms (even if they only give 3F). Then, when I whip something I switch worked tiles from cottages to farms and I'm soon back to my initial size and back to working those cottages. Of course, if I whipped to avoid reaching the happiness cap I might hold off on those farms... ;) But I think this is more flexible than waiting to get back to size on your own, especially if you've just whipped 4-5 population points. And it also helps when you can whip X pop, but need X+1 to complete the building; so switch to farms, grow that extra 1 pop, then whip.

Where possible, it's good to whip two citizens, and on the turn that the happy cap is exceeded. That way you get 10 turns of unhappiness for 60h rather than 30h, and one of the whipped pop was no good anyway.

Can tell none of you play in multiplayer. Without Slavery you get destroyed

it has been effectively eliminated from modern society

I sure wish that was true.

At lower levels you can get away with being "nice" but at higher levels you have to whip to even keep pace with the AI, not to mention they are still whipping also :(
Many times if I have an aggressive neighbor or I am going for domination victory I will be cracking that whip till the industiral era till I can draft instead.
--Try playing Monty with sacrificial altar UB and you will be amazed how fast your morality goes out the window as your steamrolling your neighbors and laughing like a mad man.

Awesome. This thread rocks. I've only used slavery once in the past, but haven't used it since as I couldn't figure out the benefits of losing population in a city. After reading the posts here, I think I'm ready to take to the whip again. I've also been playing on lower levels. So, it might not have been as necessary as well. Whipping does sound very powerful. Thanks for the insight.

I've never used slavery, due to moral reasons (no, I have no problem razing cities or declaring war on neighbor after neighbor) and the idea that short term production loss wasn't worth long term population loss. But I've also noticed that I struggle to get ahead in the early game even on Noble where I easily dominate the later game. So I'll try slavery when I get back to Civ.

I've never used slavery, due to moral reasons (no, I have no problem razing cities or declaring war on neighbor after neighbor) and the idea that short term production loss wasn't worth long term population loss. But I've also noticed that I struggle to get ahead in the early game even on Noble where I easily dominate the later game. So I'll try slavery when I get back to Civ.


you don't use it for morale reasons, in a game.:crazyeye:



above monarch, :whipped: is almost neccessary.

Whipping out conquered cities is also very great. They're unhappy and will lose pop every turn until they get to a standstill. Whip courthouses, theatres, libraries, granaries, barracks, and try to whip them in ONE turn (using the building queue and altering between buildings), and let them complete in the next turns.

If they're going to die anyway, let them do something useful while dying.
Brilliant idea. I never thought of that before.

The one big reason that's stopped me from using slavery before was that I didn't want to lose population. I thought it was more important to have that population producing gold, hammers and food away rather than rushing something so early in the game.

Agreeing with the above. Slavery can be very powerful, but isn't for use just whenever. It's great for high food/low production cities to build neccesary augmenting buildings, like libraries and granaries. It's also great for ensuring you can grab a wonder at the right time (it's worth it to lose 2-3 pop to ensure you grab that perfect wonder in a tight tech/production race), also great for whipping in cities that you've just conquered. As was said above, if your culture bubble is so small that your citizens are starving, then they may as well build a theatre and a courthouse on their way out.

It's also great for managing unhappiness and unhealthiness. As soon as your city starts hitting a "trouble spot," break out the whip, preferably to finish a building that will alleviate the problem in the future.

It's good to remember that cities grow faster when they're smaller (especially with a granary). However, it's very damaging to whip a city down to an extremely low population (whipping from 2 to 4 grows back relatively quickly, but you just axed half your production in that city, if not more, as the AI runs food before production typically). For that reason, I find whipping works best when you're around 4-12 population, but anywhere beyond that and it starts to seriously inconveniance you.

If you're a non-creative civ, slavery can be wonderful in the beginning just to crank out culture-producing buildings that would otherwise take a very long time to build, and then to wait for your borders to expand. Additionally, if you're an organized civ, it's quite easy and relatively painless to whip courthouses, which is a huge boon for your whole empire.

Agreeing with the above. Slavery can be very powerful, but isn't for use just whenever. It's great for high food/low production cities to build neccesary augmenting buildings, like libraries and granaries. It's also great for ensuring you can grab a wonder at the right time (it's worth it to lose 2-3 pop to ensure you grab that perfect wonder in a tight tech/production race), also great for whipping in cities that you've just conquered. As was said above, if your culture bubble is so small that your citizens are starving, then they may as well build a theatre and a courthouse on their way out.

It's also great for managing unhappiness and unhealthiness. As soon as your city starts hitting a "trouble spot," break out the whip, preferably to finish a building that will alleviate the problem in the future.

It's good to remember that cities grow faster when they're smaller (especially with a granary). However, it's very damaging to whip a city down to an extremely low population (whipping from 2 to 4 grows back relatively quickly, but you just axed half your production in that city, if not more, as the AI runs food before production typically). For that reason, I find whipping works best when you're around 4-12 population, but anywhere beyond that and it starts to seriously inconveniance you.

If you're a non-creative civ, slavery can be wonderful in the beginning just to crank out culture-producing buildings that would otherwise take a very long time to build, and then to wait for your borders to expand. Additionally, if you're an organized civ, it's quite easy and relatively painless to whip courthouses, which is a huge boon for your whole empire.

I whip tons of units.

OK, I just finished 1/2 of a mp game with some friends where I did some experimenting with slavery. I am now a convert. Yes, I do believe in slavery. Now, comes the next step of refining my technique and learning how to best urilize the whip. My initial questions for that are:

1) Is it best to whip after you have X number of cities?
2) Is it best to whip after you get a city size of X?
3) Is it best to whip when the population cost is a certain number, like 1 or 2?
4) Is it best to whip for certain buildings or units?
5) Is it best to whip only when gearing up for war?
6) Is it best to whip only after you have certain improvements, like a granary?

What did it for me tonight was getting boxed into an area by my teammates. I only had room for 4 cities. By around 700 AD, 3 of the four cities I had were fully developed with EVERYTHING I could have build in that city, and they were able to grow nicely. What's more, by that time, my cities were so fully developed for that era that I was generating an excess of 60+ gold per turn with my research rate at 100%, and that was after giftng a teammate 31 gold per turn so that he could keep his research rate at 100%. Meanwhile, each of my 2 teammates who were able to expand to like 10 cities a peice, but weren't whipping anything, were still working hard on developing their cities.

Had we been playing against each other, I'm sure that I could have been in a position to develop an army and wipe them out early while they were still expanding and developing.

Again, I'm now a full believer in slavery.

OK, I just finished 1/2 of a mp game with some friends where I did some experimenting with slavery. I am now a convert. Yes, I do believe in slavery. Now, comes the next step of refining my technique and learning how to best urilize the whip. My initial questions for that are:

1) Is it best to whip after you have X number of cities?
2) Is it best to whip after you get a city size of X?
3) Is it best to whip when the population cost is a certain number, like 1 or 2?
4) Is it best to whip for certain buildings or units?
5) Is it best to whip only when gearing up for war?
6) Is it best to whip only after you have certain improvements, like a granary?


1) city number has little to do with it
2) Yes... X is either you health happiness limit or 1 or two more than all the 'good' spots (ie 4+ food+hammers tiles) you can work with that city
3) 2 is better, because each whip costs 10 turns unhappiness.. no matter how many were whipped
4) not much
... cheaper is better because there is a cap on how many pop you can whip at once
... also Wonders cost 2x as much to whip, so they won't be as effective (but it is useful in a race)
... also it is worth whipping Settlers and Workers, that is a more effective use of the food, than just using the food to build them
5) not really, whip any time
6) well it is Definitely best to whip either when
..you have a Granary
...you are building the Granary
.....The best city to Whip in will have a Granary and Globe Theater

The best city to Whip in will have a Granary and Globe Theater

To enhance the whipping effect even more, that best city should also have a Forge, and a State Religion (and that you're also running the Organized Religion civic).

The same holds true for whipping in any city. But only that 'best city' can have the Globe Theater. :-P

Cool. That helps already. Now, for another question that just popped into my head. When do you stop whipping?

Cool. That helps already. Now, for another question that just popped into my head. When do you stop whipping?

you stop whipping when you are forced out of slavery civic (emancipation) or when you need the pop more than anything else (diplo win soon, domination limit, pop working very good tiles)

Just try playing on Monarch or above without it. You'll be an era behind before you know it. To say nothing of the fact that until quite late in the game it is your only way to produce units immediately in an emergency.

I usually stop whipping either (1) when I start getting some serious gold-per-turn surpluses, usually around the early or mid-industrial era. At that point, I switch to Universal Suffrage and just pay for rushes in cold hard cash or (2) I have my empire mostly developed and my borders are fairly secured, and want to focus on GP-farming by switching to the Caste System civic.

Btw. most of my games are on huge maps, 18 Civs, and at Marathon speed, so the effectiveness of whipping is a bit more pronounced.

Just try playing on Monarch or above without it. You'll be an era behind before you know it. To say nothing of the fact that until quite late in the game it is your only way to produce units immediately in an emergency.

Well, Late in the game there is Universal Suffrage...and the civic that allows you to draft units. I can't remember the name of that civic due to the number of beers I've just ingested. heh.

OK, Another whipping question. I noticed in my game tonight that the cities I was whipping in were bouncing back and forth between a city size of 5 to 7. At least until the cities had built everything possible and I didn't need to whip. So, is there an idea size of a city to hover around while you're whipping in that city?

Obviously, I guess there are several factors in this...such as improvements like a forge or the number of hammers around the city that you generate. Ideally, a formula would be great... X number of hammers * y number of food resources + z number of health bonuses / w number of happiness modifiers = a city size of xx would be ideal for when you get the most benefits from whiipping.

Damn, I hope that made sense, but again, I site the beer from my previous post. heh.

OK, Another whipping question. I noticed in my game tonight that the cities I was whipping in were bouncing back and forth between a city size of 5 to 7. At least until the cities had built everything possible and I didn't need to whip. So, is there an idea size of a city to hover around while you're whipping in that city?

Obviously, I guess there are several factors in this...such as improvements like a forge or the number of hammers around the city that you generate. Ideally, a formula would be great... X number of hammers * y number of food resources + z number of health bonuses / w number of happiness modifiers = a city size of xx would be ideal for when you get the most benefits from whiipping.

Damn, I hope that made sense, but again, I site the beer from my previous post. heh.

krikkitone already answered that!
Remember, it's a game, not a calculator contest;)

Can tell none of you play in multiplayer. Without Slavery you get destroyed

Not every poster on this thread says that they don't use slavery, so this is just a BS troll.

Just try playing on Monarch or above without it. You'll be an era behind before you know it. To say nothing of the fact that until quite late in the game it is your only way to produce units immediately in an emergency.

Well, I think you are wrong here. I play on monarch and have never used the whip. And Im always as good as the AI in the techrace. (well, not in the beginning). But after reading this thread, I will rule monarch! :)

Thanks for this post guys slavery greatly improved my early game (playing Immortal now warlord expansion) Like most of us I was addicted to chopping for quick hammer boost...now I got an alternative to keep those nice forest for post mathematics. I was a long time lurker of this site since civ3 and I finalized my registry form today to post this reply... Thanks again for taking away my fear of using the whip.


Merci Beaucoup!!

This has been a great thread. Thanks for all the input.

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only person that wasn't really aware of the benefits here.

I'm now about midway through a noble level game and the difference is massive. Normally I'm behind in techs at this point (especially if I had an early need to liberate some towns from my neighbors) and have to scramble to catch up by the late game. Instead I'm the tech leader and have a strong standing army that is about to make life very rough (and short) for the Koreans next door.

Thanks much for the lesson.

B

This is a really interesting thread.

It's also kind of a bummer, 'cause even after all of these really lucid explanations of the game mechanics, it would still ruin the game for me to use slavery or raze cities. I razed a city by accident once, and felt guilty for hours afterwards. But then, I'm the kind of person who gets so lost in the world of a book or a movie that I'm kind of puzzled to find myself back in the real world afterwards. Is there anybody else out there who takes the "moral" aspects of Civ leadership way too seriously?

But then, I'm the kind of person who gets so lost in the world of a book or a movie that I'm kind of puzzled to find myself back in the real world afterwards. Is there anybody else out there who takes the "moral" aspects of Civ leadership way too seriously?

Yes. I have difficulty getting my mother interested in the same games I do since she doesn't like the fighting aspects. Watching her virtual soldiers die on her behalf is so bothersome she nearly gets to tears over it. She'll only fight in games where the action happens abstractly off-screen and she doesn't have to watch it. So you're not alone in respecting the lives of your populace no matter how imaginary they may be.

I've go no problem going to war -- I just have to minimize the impact on the civilion population! :lol: Funny that I can't just relax and say, hell, it's just a bunch of ones and zeroes....

I'm surprised Firaxis left in a civic so powerful it amounts to a design bug. Mostly Civ4 did a good job of fixing broken parts of earlier Civs like love frenzies and ICS. But even after having their nose rubbed in the power of pop rushing in Civ3 they left it in and even strengthened it somewhat (no longer associated with a crummy gov't in the early age, plus you need it to get rid of excess pop you accidentally let grow)

The power of slavery is indicated by the point that it provides the production of 2 or more mined grass hills in every city. But even that misses much of the power of slavery in that slavery ALSO evades pop size limits. To use the mined hills, you'd need to grow the people, and then be able to keep them healthy and happy. Slavery can make the hammers without any of the wait or the resources - so it's like having 2+ mined hills in every city AND 2+ Hanging Gardens AND 2+ Notre Dames. Ugh, no wonder it's overpowered.

It's pretty easy to fix the game-breaking aspects. All slavery needs to do is increase the hammer production of citizens by 1 to 6 (depending on how strong you want it to be) Even 1 is a useful civic. 2 might be a better number even so. You'd still get the production boost but game limitations like pop limit would remain intact.

This is a really interesting thread.

It's also kind of a bummer, 'cause even after all of these really lucid explanations of the game mechanics, it would still ruin the game for me to use slavery or raze cities. I razed a city by accident once, and felt guilty for hours afterwards. But then, I'm the kind of person who gets so lost in the world of a book or a movie that I'm kind of puzzled to find myself back in the real world afterwards. Is there anybody else out there who takes the "moral" aspects of Civ leadership way too seriously?

Yeah. Some patches ago slavery was a cheaper civ than the featureless starting civic it replaces, so I would adopt slavery and still never use it. I used to have a problem razing cities but now they're too expensive to keep. And in any game (Civ, Starcraft, Age of Myth) I fight very cautiously and when possible defensively or with hit and run tactics to minimize the casualties to my side. Playing against the computers in Starcraft for example I'd often take an hour to win but have a kill/loss ratio like 900/1. In Civ though I've found that the way to take minimal casualties is the Powell Doctrine, strike swiftly and with overwhelming force.

you don't use it for morale reasons, in a game.:crazyeye:


I agree it's silly, I admitted I raze cities and am a bloodthirsty warmonger. (I also let my people use the cow resource back when I was a vegetarian, and I still let them eat pigs and seafood if the city and empire are Jewish.) But there's something particularly odious about slavery beyond most other sins, even the mass murder of starting a war. I suspect the makers of Civ flinch at some things too, otherwise why can't you try to purge unwanted religions from your cities? Heaven knows it's a common enough historical fact, and would be a valid strategic option (lose a temple, deny the religion's founder line of sight and shrine income). But yeah, accepting that slavery is a historic reality I will try to use it in the game, since I seem to be hitting a wall at Monarch without it.

PS Someone asked, the civic that enables drafting is Nationalism.

Where else would you find a forum on how wonderful slavery is?

I'm with the OP in that I never used it in early versions of Civ, but I tried Monarch level and failed miserably. It can be used to great effect to 'whip up' an army bigger than your opponents for an early war to put you on even ground with your opponents.
I won this way on my second outing at Monarch.

I'm not convinced that it's as useful in the longer term, as in subsequent Monarch level games I find my population is too low to support an army larger than my opponents in the 1500s.

Could be that more attention to land improvements would be auspicious. Or it could just be that a change in tactics is required.

answers to JoeM, a4phantom, and some others

Slavery is in real life a very bad thing, although an historical fact (and IMHO still a reality, when you buy shoes that a chinese child made, for instance). But cIV is a game. In this game, people are more unhappy to have live neighbours than dead slaves. So, you need to whip them to keep them happy!

The whip becomes less efficient when your cities grow bigger, so it's true that later in the game you cannot whip every city. But unhappy captured cities make good whipping candidates, same for newly settled commerce cities until US is available.

I don't use slavery except situationally. I did early on, but found I didn't like sacrificing long-term population growth in exchange for short-term production.

The only situations I've found it useful:

- whipping defenders when an incoming AI has declared war and outguns me (probably why they declared in the first place)

- if I'm short health or happiness resources (since I'd have to freeze growth anyway)

- if I'm spiritual, so switching in and out of slavery is relatively "no cost" (not being able to switch civics for 5 turns can be a tiny consideration)

I've never been in a situation where "core" cities have zero production power, so perhaps that's another. However, outside the core cities, I do fill in "fishing villages" fairly often, but since their role is to generate commerce, which requires population, I find whipping for hammers to be counter-productive to their purpose.

EW

Well in the Fishing Villages whipping can be very good for
1. Granaries (one of the best things to whip for) pop 4 Granary whipped beats unwhipped pop 4 to pop 8
and
2. Commerce Multipliers
and
3. Max Pop increasers (Marketplaces are good for this.)

And good for Courthouses everywere

I'm playing (vanilla 1.61) as the Persians and whipping up infrastructure and Immortals. However, when I hold the cursor over the whip button it says "1 :mad: for 18 or 25 turns". I assume it's longer than 10 because I'm playing Epic, but why isn't it always the same? I'm on Prince level.

Because it stacks up. If you whip once you'll get x turns. If y turns later (y < x) you whip again, you'll get (x-y) with 2 unhappy and another x with 1 unhappy face.

Slavery is in real life a very bad thing, although an historical fact (and IMHO still a reality, when you buy shoes that a chinese child made, for instance).

We don't have to import stuff to be exploiting slavery, look at immigrant farm hands, domestic workers and sex workers here in the Land of the Free.

Thanks Carl Corey. I knew you'd be King of Amber.

We don't have to import stuff to be exploiting slavery, look at immigrant farm hands, domestic workers and sex workers here in the Land of the Free.


didn't want to outline it;)

Hm I must say there was a time when I was dead against slavery. however I still did pretty well in SP and MP.

I generally use it so that my city won't be working unimproved tiles (or tiles that are naff even when worked ^^). Also I will slave something i really need. Like a culture building, a granary, a library, sometimes a forge. Things that have immediate benefit and u want out sooner rather than later.

However I find serfdom very powerful and almost always switch to this when I grab feudalism.

A lot of people use slavery a LOT more than me and swear by it.

Ok I'm convinced, playing Prince whipping helped me rule the early game where I usually fall behind. I whip inexpertly and it was my first round on Warlords, so it must be pretty tough. That city on the flood planes that produces tons of commerce but would take forever to build a library for example . . .

Just a small addendum to a great thread:

If you want to know how much longer a city will be suffering a malus from "the cruel oppression", hover over the whip button and deduct 15 (this is for epic, don't know for other speeds) from the "n turns of :(" message you get.

Just a small addendum to a great thread:

If you want to know how much longer a city will be suffering a malus from "the cruel oppression", hover over the whip button and deduct 15 (this is for epic, don't know for other speeds) from the "n turns of :(" message you get.

Good tip Jorunkun.

It's only a game. If Disney made the game they wouldn't have made that a usable civic


iF Disney made this game you would have something like.


Cinderella has build Space Mountain or Pluto in diplomacy saying: Fear my Main Street Parade! ;)

Slavery is power. Still, all game speeds/levels up to Deity are perfectly winnable without cracking the whip once. So it's not like Firaxis forces players to use slavery.

A historical view: When invaded by Nazi Germany, many workers (and "workers") in the Soviet Union were literally worked to death. Their sacrifice, however, made a lot of war-material which was instrumental in stopping the Nazis. Mabye the end did justify the means here.

To the best of my knowledge, America didn't need to work anybody to death in order to produce war material. Ah, the advantages of voluntary capitalist labor versus forced soviet slavery!

To the best of my knowledge, America didn't need to work anybody to death in order to produce war material. Ah, the advantages of voluntary capitalist labor versus forced soviet slavery!

The same 'voluntary capitalist laborers' that died toting American war materiel up Hamburger Hill less than 50 years ago? There's not much difference in being conscripted to manufacture guns until you die and being conscripted to carry guns until you die.

The nice thing about democratic capitalism is freedom: the freedom to starve (or take on a s**t job).

To the best of my knowledge, America didn't need to work anybody to death in order to produce war material. Ah, the advantages of voluntary capitalist labor versus forced soviet slavery!

America also didn't make nearly as big a contribution to the Allied cause as the Soviets did, at least against the Nazis. No disrespect to the millions of Americans who fought and hundreds of thousands who died in WW2, but comparing our participation to the Soviets' is impossible.


The same 'voluntary capitalist laborers' that died toting American war materiel up Hamburger Hill less than 50 years ago? There's not much difference in being conscripted to manufacture guns until you die and being conscripted to carry guns until you die.

Obviously I don't agree that there's "not much difference", but it's still a good point.

The nice thing about democratic capitalism is freedom: the freedom to starve (or take on a s**t job).

I've never lived in a currently Communist country, but I'm pretty sure a few people have starved or had bad jobs in them.

i use the slavery civic up until i get access to caste system. i have my city layout in mind at all times, and i have to (early in game) set up the buildings, i have :mad: faces for 21 turns at sometimes, i dont rush passed that mark as the cons start to out way the pros. once the intital buildings are rushed with those poor lil IMAGINARY AND FICTIONAL citizens i set the city to miscelaneous and domestic duties and/or watever needs doing.

generally i survive on slavery up until renaisance. the building blocks of my empire had been built many a turn ago so i can look to the future and focus on those national wonders and where to place them.

about the people ranting about slavery. no, its not the worst thing mankind has done. it kept people in place by making them serve a master who himself alone could not work, but united they all stand together, for their common benifit. and just so i can anger any more anti slavists' who are really only from america and trying to show that they care with heart and soul for our black brothers who not so long ago were slaves; get over it. its 100 ago 'ancient history' as it were.

i use the slavery civic up until i get access to caste system. i have my city layout in mind at all times, and i have to (early in game) set up the buildings, i have :mad: faces for 21 turns at sometimes, i dont rush passed that mark as the cons start to out way the pros. once the intital buildings are rushed with those poor lil IMAGINARY AND FICTIONAL citizens i set the city to miscelaneous and domestic duties and/or watever needs doing.

generally i survive on slavery up until renaisance. the building blocks of my empire had been built many a turn ago so i can look to the future and focus on those national wonders and where to place them.

about the people ranting about slavery. no, its not the worst thing mankind has done. it kept people in place by making them serve a master who himself alone could not work, but united they all stand together, for their common benifit. and just so i can anger any more anti slavists' who are really only from america and trying to show that they care with heart and soul for our black brothers who not so long ago were slaves; get over it. its 100 ago 'ancient history' as it were.

not early, but later in the game I can have unhappiness for up to 80 turns.

Moral objections aside, I must say I'm a rather conservative whipper. I understand how powerful the production rush is, yet I do not find whipping all that practical except very-early game.

Once I've researched happiness-increasing techs (Monarchy, Calendar, Construction, ...) + acquired one or two religions I want my cities to grow and in particular work additional cottages - or farms, when running an SE - such that I can support a larger army and empire.
Whipping at that point usually implies taking away citizens from my commerce-yielding tiles, which is the last thing I want. Sure, when the :mad: show up again I'll whip them away but that's about the extent of my use of slavery for the remainder of a typical game.

Mind, I tend to keep slavery in place for quite some time (except with SE or possibly when aiming for culturaly victory, in which case I prefer Caste System of course) Unless I've not been able to found decent production cities I'll rarely crack the whip anymore however...

So I was wondering: do you still put the production rush to extensive use past the early game? And if so, in what sort of circumstances?

not for me, i change civics at renaisance era. whatever else at hand ill change to, serfdom comes in handy too, and i sometimes go step by step with civics, working my way down the list after wipping my nation into gear, cranking out improvements, speeding through the game with lots of specialists, then be forced to get emancicapation due to its :mad: effect, and to speed any new cottages about my empire.

about the people ranting about slavery. no, its not the worst thing mankind has done. it kept people in place by making them serve a master who himself alone could not work, but united they all stand together, for their common benifit. and just so i can anger any more anti slavists' who are really only from america and trying to show that they care with heart and soul for our black brothers who not so long ago were slaves; get over it. its 100 ago 'ancient history' as it were.

While I use slavery in-game, I do think it's one of the worst things humans have ever done to one another. Claiming its some kind of wonderful symbiotic relationship is quite wrong, and reminds me of Southern articles I read pre-Civil War that were trying to elevate slavery from a "neccesary evil" to a "good thing entirely" in the eyes of the country. Obviously, such arguments failed. The fact of the matter is that you're subduing entire generations of people and removing their free will from the equation. You generate a state that relies on slavery, displaces and undercuts free workers, and grows increasingly militaristic and paranoid due to the number of slaves within itself. It's a situation that corrupts both the slaver and the enslaved. In the classical world, it was the only way to gather enough labor together to build huge projects. That is no defense, it's simple fact. In the modern age, it's rightfully reviled and dismissed as barbarism.

yes it is a bad thing, just not the worst. sort of pety compared to some of our other acomplishments.

Moral objections aside, I must say I'm a rather conservative whipper. I understand how powerful the production rush is, yet I do not find whipping all that practical except very-early game.

Once I've researched happiness-increasing techs (Monarchy, Calendar, Construction, ...) + acquired one or two religions I want my cities to grow and in particular work additional cottages - or farms, when running an SE - such that I can support a larger army and empire.
Whipping at that point usually implies taking away citizens from my commerce-yielding tiles, which is the last thing I want. Sure, when the :mad: show up again I'll whip them away but that's about the extent of my use of slavery for the remainder of a typical game.

Mind, I tend to keep slavery in place for quite some time (except with SE or possibly when aiming for culturaly victory, in which case I prefer Caste System of course) Unless I've not been able to found decent production cities I'll rarely crack the whip anymore however...

So I was wondering: do you still put the production rush to extensive use past the early game? And if so, in what sort of circumstances?

u have to flip the issue. slavery is the most powerful production mechanism in the game. inso far as u want production u should attempt to gain it ALL by slavery(certain circumstances aside). so the question is no longer how much u need slavery, but how much u could possibly use slavery and get away w/ it.

i never really used slavery, but i'll try to incorporate it more now.

i've always heard about the "Globe Theatre/Happy Whipping" and always wanted to try it out, but i never got around to it. Does this strategy work? Or is it an exploit nobody uses?

also where does slavery leave food surplus? is it the half filled mark if you have granary or do you have to accumlate food halfway again?

minmaster, i think you should try a bit before asking too much.
If you have granary, you often grow back one pop right after the whip (depends on your food tiles obviously).

About the globe theater thing, you need
- theatres all around the place (6/8, depending on map size)
- to be under hereditary rule and slavery civics
- to have very high food + granary = grow back in very few turns

How to do it?
turn1 : You whip one cat/axe for 2 pop.
turn 2: You apply the overflow to globe theater, while fortifying your happy troop.
turn 3 (or after you grow enough) = turn 1 : you put an axe/cat in the queue in front of the globe theater and whip it for 2 pop.
turn 4 = turn 2.
rince and repeat until you globe theater is done.
Remember to put every hammer in globe theater while growing, but don't focus on them, focus on food.
this way you get a lot of troops, a fast globe theater and no unhappiness.
Don't fear to whip down to size 2. You'll grow back fast.

I understand the synergy of slavery and specialist economy (farming, whipping buildings, asigning specialist to these buildings). However, I usually cottage spam, because it gives more commerce at low happycaps. Suits slavery as well to the cottage economy?

I understand the synergy of slavery and specialist economy (farming, whipping buildings, asigning specialist to these buildings). However, I usually cottage spam, because it gives more commerce at low happycaps. Suits slavery as well to the cottage economy?

Slavery is fine if you have a production problem. But it doesn't solve money problems. Caste System (merchant specialists!) is better for that. In one of my last game I conquered an enormous continent (about 40% of the total world size) on emperor. I hadn't invented currency yet. My army was large enough and by the lack of something better to produce I could only produce new units. Too many! Instead of razing the developed cities that I conquered I wanted to keep them and my economy was living on loot money. Until I switched to Caste System and employed a lot of merchant specialists. My production (and growth) decreased, but my economy was up in green again and this way I could afford this prolonged war.

So in short:
Slavery -> Production
Caste System -> Money+ Culture + Science (depends on specialist)

- Lets say food is 25/26, or anything above 20, so you will grow in 1 turn.

- Now you whip 1 pop. You get 30 hammers (37 if there is a forge). With a granary, in 3 turns (do the math, or read my article (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=178491) about it) you will be with 3 pop again, and with the SAME 25/26 food.

- If you instead dont use whip, in 3 turns you will only produce 12 hammers from the mine.

- Thats 30 vs 12 hammers. Whip is so powerful that now i realize im LOSING hammers if i dont use it. In this example, losing 18, or 25 if i have a forge.


Hi,
I'm just going to show a little error in your math. I do not really disagree with your opinion on slavery civics.. only that the malus on it/ bonus for other civics is not high enough to represent the evilness of slavery in RL.

the issue of maths is that using the whip you end at turn whip + 3t with : 30hammer(whip) + 3hammer (city square) + 25/26food + city 3.
you say that at whip + 3 (without whipping) you have :
15hammer (mine + city)

it is wrong
technically you have :
15hammer (mine + city) + city 4 + FOOD + Case 4th production + eventually pop 5
if the 4th case is a 2Food : you still have a +6excess food. (corn + city + flood plain + 4th case - pop : 6 + 2 + 4 +2 -4*2 =6)
so in 3 turn you have produced 18F, making 25 +18 = 26 +17Food ==> pop 4 +17F ==> granary 13Food + 17F = 28 +2 ==> pop 5 +2F ==> granary : pop 5 16/30.
ie on turn 3 you have reached your pop 5.
AND/OR you have hammer/commerce yield for your pop 4.

while the conclusion may say that the whip was more efficient, I won't say that you lose so much more by not whipping. and depending on the yield of the pop 4 you can even out the gains :
if the 4th case is a plain hill / forested plain hill : +4Hammer
3 turns : +12 hammers
+ you still have a +4excess food. (corn + city + flood plain + 4th case - pop : 6 + 2 + 4 +0 -4*2 =4)
so in 3 turn you have produced 12F, making 25 +12 = 26 +11Food ==> pop 4 +11F ==> granary 13Food + 11F = 24/28 ==> pop 5 in turn 4

+ eventual commerce yield of case 4

so you have produced :
whipping:
33hammer + pop 4 in 1 turn.
no whipping :
15 hammer + 3*yield of case 4 + pop 5
15 + 12 = 27 hammer + commerce + pop 5 in 1 turn

(oh, and the 1_2 pop of advance you have will be reconducted for as long as you don't have reached your pop limit, so the 4th case yield is in fact a "+1case yield" that will change the balance of whip/no whip for many turns, not only 3) (you have at least to do your math on a 2-3 rounds of 10turns to experiment the effect of using the whip or not.)

purely speaking of hammer, whipping is the best,
if you have a low pop limit, whipping is good,
as early hammer is worth more than late hammers, whipping early in the game is good.

otherwise... having a greater pop is best most of the time, and the comparaison between whipping or not is not always so clear.

purely speaking of hammer, whipping is the best,
if you have a low pop limit, whipping is good,
as early hammer is worth more than late hammers, whipping early in the game is good.

otherwise... having a greater pop is best most of the time, and the comparaison between whipping or not is not always so clear.

you have it right. Early on, when happiness cap is low, whipping is very efficient. But later, when you could be working good tiles, it's painful to whip away useful population.

I still whip even late in conquered city, since they often would be starving anyway.

Didn't Firaxis bottle it and NOT include slavery at all in Colonization, which was basically set in that exact period?

The game is meant to be pseudo-historical, simply ignoring history is not the way to be politically correct. I think having something like this helps you understand what happened (to a very small degree), and if it raises the consciousness and makes you think a bit, all the better.

~ karembeu

technically it does not make you think at all, as for cIV, slavery is one of the best civics.
so while you cIV is historically correct, you do not want to change to an other civic until very late. there is nothing to represent the "evilness" + the inferior long term productivity of slavery.

It shall have a cost : exploitation to death of people, scavanging the surrounding countries to have new slaves..etc. are the pillars of slavery and cannot come without costs ? (angrying local population, spreading unhealthiness, losing lot of potential to manual work, growing sens of anger, possibility of slave revolts (many ones but rarely successful, but always costly)...etc

in cIV there is no cost. the only one is in fact a bonus : the whip (sacrificing pop points) permit to get ride of the pop limit : too much pop ? whip a bit, have more production and loose the unworking/iddle/angry citizens... :so a malus of loosing pop is transformed in a bonus.

A way to even it would be to render whipping less effective : 20hammers or something like that. or increasing war weariness, or increasing maintenance, or risks of flipping the city to a non-slavery civ...etc

technically it does not make you think at all, as for cIV, slavery is one of the best civics.
so while you cIV is historically correct, you do not want to change to an other civic until very late. there is nothing to represent the "evilness" + the inferior long term productivity of slavery.

It shall have a cost : exploitation to death of people, scavanging the surrounding countries to have new slaves..etc. are the pillars of slavery and cannot come without costs ? (angrying local population, spreading unhealthiness, losing lot of potential to manual work, growing sens of anger, possibility of slave revolts (many ones but rarely successful, but always costly)...etc

in cIV there is no cost. the only one is in fact a bonus : the whip (sacrificing pop points) permit to get ride of the pop limit : too much pop ? whip a bit, have more production and loose the unworking/iddle/angry citizens... :so a malus of loosing pop is transformed in a bonus.

A way to even it would be to render whipping less effective : 20hammers or something like that. or increasing war weariness, or increasing maintenance, or risks of flipping the city to a non-slavery civ...etc

what was the drawback historically?
for the slaves, the drawback is clear, but for the empire?

The good idea in your post would be a higher risk of flipping.
There is a mod out there (total realism, if i remember well) implementing slave revolts, but my fear is it's going to give an even higher positive output to slavery (more xp :lol: ).
My guess to make it less powerful would be some chance of not being effective (say 20% of the whips make you lose pop, but give you no hammers = slave revolt). This chance could be higher if there are less troops in the city than pop you whip (something like 80% success if you have more troops than pop whipped, 70% if you have the same amount of troops than pop whipped, 60% for pop whipped>troops, 50% if no troops).
If you have no troops, the whipped pop would become barbarians.

there was drawbacks for the empires... but they where inferior to the bonuses... so globaly good for the empire.

the arabian slavery was only possible with de facto war with all neighbors : where do you think the slaves came from? From captured europeans, captured black-africans ...etc. + the one not coming from war were bought to their captors (mostly other black-africans) so it should cost.

Any great use of slavery : south USA, MA China ... was detrimentale to the develloppement of science : so much intellectual potential was carrying tonnes of stone instead of thinking... etc.

So IMO slavery should increase production : it is a fact
maybe gold (thing of the triangular commerce) :
but it should be detrimentale otherwise : a 10 turn unhappy penalty is low cost. maybe a permanent civ-wise -2 happy for civic + -1happy for city for 10 turn per whip...

or something like: whippable slave can only come from external pop : ex: other culture + captured units
or any ather mecanisme.

I do not know. but think of a way to modelise : government / people in power wants slaves or slave-like people(-labor cost/ +production). they are countered by the other citizens (some defects in slavery that comes from population but can affect a whole empire: ie: unhappy, war-weariness, lower devellopment of cottage, lower science, risk of mutiny, need of costly war with neighbourg..etc).

There has to be an explanation, otherwise we would still all be under slavery regimes. And speaking about discovery of emancipation is no good: if it had never brought interesting things to the countries/empires, it would have stayed a great thought in lightened minds and never applied.

Well non war based slavery was essentially the early (and obviously most brutal) form of welfare (ie what happened to poor people who couldn't get a regular job)

So from the empire's point of view it was therefore a way of getting some production out of people that would otherwise just starve/turn to crime.

I do agree it is a bit overpowered, by making it 20 hammers... or perhaps 10 turns unhappiness per pop whipped, then it would be improved.

Maybe like chopping let it get a boost with a later tech (althouth more Renaissance/Industrial...perhaps Communism (boosts from 20 to 30 hammers or from 30 to 50 hammers (with the 10 turns unhappiness per whip)... or it could also get boosted with Biology/Corporation/Constitution/Scientific Method/Corporation/Replacable Parts.


And the discovery of emancipation is a perfectly good idea... the concept that all people are equal is what really destroyed it. Slavery could be justified as long as some people are a bit more 'like animals/machines' so that they can be owned.

One thing they might want to do is also to boost Serfdom so that it becomes a good alternative (No Maintenance and/or an increase in the Worker Cost of some things making Worker turns a more valuable asset... like Chopping to 6 turns instead of 3)

Another alternative would be to improve Slavery but make it high Maintenance (say make it only 6 unhappy per pop whipped, and allow you to whip like you were chopping, ie 1 pop at any time at no 'first start/wonders' penalty)

maybe a permanent civ-wise -2 happy for civic + -1happy for city for 10 turn per whip...

good idea -1 happy (well, +1 unhappy) would be enough, though

There has to be an explanation, otherwise we would still all be under slavery regimes.
aren't we? there still are slaves around the world, some in France too (what would you call the "paperless" emigrants, working in underground workshops?)

no. no negetive bonuses. thats as bad as the corruption and workers with movement of 1. switch the emancicapation wo +1 happiness instead and that'll make it work out. besides slavery has that 10 turns of unhappiness, thats bad enough, as i usually have 25-30 turns of unhappiness when i have slavery.

Well, I put in the mod I suggested of having slavery provide a "slave" specialist (3 hammers) instead of whipping and I'm ecstatic with the result. It's still usually better than caste society but it doesn't really break the game anymore. Less micro, too - the governors are pretty reasonable with slave use and I just have to poke my nose in a city now and again to make sure they haven't overenslaved. No more checking every turn for the proper whip time. Woohoo!

Didn't Firaxis bottle it and NOT include slavery at all in Colonization, which was basically set in that exact period?

The game is meant to be pseudo-historical, simply ignoring history is not the way to be politically correct. I think having something like this helps you understand what happened (to a very small degree), and if it raises the consciousness and makes you think a bit, all the better.

~ karembeu

in colonization, all of your citizens only eat food and cost no money. i'd say they are all slaves :)

Well, I put in the mod I suggested of having slavery provide a "slave" specialist (3 hammers) instead of whipping and I'm ecstatic with the result. It's still usually better than caste society but it doesn't really break the game anymore. Less micro, too - the governors are pretty reasonable with slave use and I just have to poke my nose in a city now and again to make sure they haven't overenslaved. No more checking every turn for the proper whip time. Woohoo!

Actually, that could probably be simplified by having it simply give +2 hammers to Citizens. (and it would remove the Granary Effect)

Although removing the Granary Effect would be unfortunate as that is a major boost to the Expansive Trait.

Perhaps....
Citizen gives 1 Hammer
+1 Food per citizen with Granary
+2 Hammers per citizen with Slavery

I think to reduce the MM it would be better to make Whipping like Chopping. You can click on the 'Pop Rush Button' Any time you want, as many times as you want and each time it whips 1 population and adds X hammers and Y turns of unhappiness. (the same way that Chopping always adds 20 hammers regardless of what is being produced.)

I'd nerf it a bit and making it 20 hammers and 6 turns unhappy per pop. But that would make it better for building Wonders and for building emergency units.

yeah too much hammers and then if you ever get attacked, change civic for 1 turn penalty, then rush modern armors everywhere. to save a city on that 2nd turn.

still a good idea. but something more reall than unhappiness would work. keeping slaves cost money so your city would have increased maintanence, but i dunno, i cant think of a good con right now. nevermind.

I found the guy saying try winning above monarch without whipping quite funny. I've won on immortal with only whipping units once or twice while an enemy was attacking the city. Whipping isn't as game-changing as some people in this thread make it out to be.

I found the guy saying try winning above monarch without whipping quite funny. I've won on immortal with only whipping units once or twice while an enemy was attacking the city. Whipping isn't as game-changing as some people in this thread make it out to be.

I don't play on immortal :( , but I recently tried it out after reading this topic and I must say I'm converted. I know this'll sound strange but for me it actually makes the beginning of the game slightly more interesting. I'm not saying it's game-changing, but it gives me some micromanaging to do, which I like :)

I don't play on immortal :( , but I recently tried it out after reading this topic and I must say I'm converted. I know this'll sound strange but for me it actually makes the beginning of the game slightly more interesting. I'm not saying it's game-changing, but it gives me some micromanaging to do, which I like :)

Oh I definitely agree. I'm normally extremely leery to use the whip. After reading this thread I am seeing that it can be quite useful, though. I never thought of the idea of slavery being similar to working a 1 food, 3 hammer mined hill instead of working a 2 food tile. When it was put that way in this thread I instantly saw the merit in using it. I'm planning to make some good use of it in my next game and hopefully the payoff will be good. But I just wanted to comment that in no way is whipping necessary to win on immortal with standard settings.

Actually, that could probably be simplified by having it simply give +2 hammers to Citizens. (and it would remove the Granary Effect)
That was my first effort and I couldn't get it to work. I couldn't figure out how to make a civic give a bonus to only one kind of citizen. Putting in a new specialist did work.

there was drawbacks for the empires... but they where inferior to the bonuses... so globaly good for the empire.

the arabian slavery was only possible with de facto war with all neighbors : where do you think the slaves came from? From captured europeans, captured black-africans ...etc. + the one not coming from war were bought to their captors (mostly other black-africans) so it should cost.

Any great use of slavery : south USA, MA China ... was detrimentale to the develloppement of science : so much intellectual potential was carrying tonnes of stone instead of thinking... etc.

So IMO slavery should increase production : it is a fact
maybe gold (thing of the triangular commerce) :
but it should be detrimentale otherwise : a 10 turn unhappy penalty is low cost. maybe a permanent civ-wise -2 happy for civic + -1happy for city for 10 turn per whip...

or something like: whippable slave can only come from external pop : ex: other culture + captured units
or any ather mecanisme.

I do not know. but think of a way to modelise : government / people in power wants slaves or slave-like people(-labor cost/ +production). they are countered by the other citizens (some defects in slavery that comes from population but can affect a whole empire: ie: unhappy, war-weariness, lower devellopment of cottage, lower science, risk of mutiny, need of costly war with neighbourg..etc).

There has to be an explanation, otherwise we would still all be under slavery regimes. And speaking about discovery of emancipation is no good: if it had never brought interesting things to the countries/empires, it would have stayed a great thought in lightened minds and never applied.


Civ4 provides the perfect mechanism for this: Slavery civic should drastically reduce Great People birthrate. Uncle Tom aside, there aren't many great slaves, so having your population in bondage should prevent you from producing so many. The hard part would be making this penalty stick with Spiritual civs.

Civ4 provides the perfect mechanism for this: Slavery civic should drastically reduce Great People birthrate. Uncle Tom aside, there aren't many great slaves, so having your population in bondage should prevent you from producing so many. The hard part would be making this penalty stick with Spiritual civs.

Yeah, what were they thinking making a society like ancient Greece produce a lot of great people?

Yeah, what were they thinking making a society like ancient Greece produce a lot of great people?

I thought of that. And it's quite possible that having many people doing pure drudge work enabled other people to concentrate on loftier pursuits, since that's what the idle rich seem to have done in ancient Greece. But Greece would still retain it's 100% bonus from being a philosophical civ, therefore outpacing most others during the age of slavery, and unless the penalty was more than 50% slave Greece would produce at least as many GP as most nonslave states. Some questions for you: can you name some of the United States's Great People who would never have achieved anything more than a lifetime of brute labor had slavery continued? Can you name some Great Scientists and Artists that Germany lost under the Nazis when certain classes of people were condemned to slavery and denied a role in society and the ability to use their talents?

Well, in my civic system, I have slavery give a -1 happiness penalty from barracks, and its Caste System which generates the drop in GPP. Why? Because the description suggests that people's natural ability is not promoted UNLESS they are from the correct strata of society. So what if that Garbologists son is a great Poet, he is STILL a Garbologists son!!!

Aussie_Lurker.

Back to topic... ^^

I am a converted slaver. I've seen mentioned that this works particularly well alongside a specialist economy. It seems to me that a specialist economy carried out correctly, which is hard (if someone could direct me to further information on this it would be appreciated), is the strongest method for teching. First of all, I'm not sure I see how the two go hand in hand, except that both focus on food. Also I love science, so in my specialist economy I try and run as many scientist specialists as possible (which requires caste system). I'm sure you already see the dilemma. ^^

damn even after this, i still cant find the chance to whip it. maybe next game.

slavery and Specialists economy are not going hand in hand in big cities.

The way to make it work is to whip granary, market, library in "small" cities, allowing them to work 2 scientists and/or merchants.

damn even after this, i still cant find the chance to whip it. maybe next game.

you want to try the whip? Go for an expansive leader, start building the granary asap, and whip it when you are size 2. After that, go for a library. When you're size 4 again (and 10 turns are over at least), whip either the library if you can (high probability, since you should have overflow from the granary) or a axe/spear/catapult (the one you need the most) and go back to library.

I've played a few games since reading this thread and I'm still not finding many uses for the whip. Sure, I'm whipping more than normal but I haven't ran into a situation yet that warrants whipping every 15 turns. The only city where that would be the case is a city that is very high food production and has 1 or no hills to work. The thing is I rarely settle my cities so this situation occurs. If you're whipping when you already have multiple hills for the city to work then I think you're wasting commerce/population for nothing. You'll come out a little ahead in hammers but the one unhappy person is one less cottage that can be worked.

I've played a few games since reading this thread and I'm still not finding many uses for the whip. Sure, I'm whipping more than normal but I haven't ran into a situation yet that warrants whipping every 15 turns. The only city where that would be the case is a city that is very high food production and has 1 or no hills to work. The thing is I rarely settle my cities so this situation occurs. If you're whipping when you already have multiple hills for the city to work then I think you're wasting commerce/population for nothing. You'll come out a little ahead in hammers but the one unhappy person is one less cottage that can be worked.

The whip really comes into its own during war. It can give you an army fast while you run Vassalage and Theocracy for +4 exp before you change back to other more productive civics (FS and OR perhaps). So in your core cities use the whip to build units faster with good exp. This allows you to rapidly exploit a new military technology before the AI can build the counter troops.

It can get a newly captured city under control and make it productive faster than any other way (except wasting huge amounts of gold and rush buying with US). If you capture 5 or 6 cities in a late game war it will be horribly expensive to use US to rebuild them and not worth the expense... but the whip costs the empire very little.

If you whip in buildings that give happiness you can ignore unhappiness from whipping. In the first 20 to 30 turns after a city comes out of revolt I will often have used the whip 7 times (= -7 happiness and only 2 recovered) but since I'll whip in a forge (say + 2 happy) and a market (+2 happy) and a temple +1... there is no net change. The unhappiness will wear off gradually over time and my city gets to benefit from the 7 buildings I whipped in.

The whip is most efficient in a small city since it takes less food to regrow a pop (15 food at size 5 and 20 food at size 10, both with a granary). In the period when I'm reconstructing a captured city I get it down to size 4 or 6 and work maximum food / hammer tiles even if it could be size 12. That also avoids problems with war weariness, motherland and emancipation since they are all dependent on city population.

I've played a few games since reading this thread and I'm still not finding many uses for the whip. Sure, I'm whipping more than normal but I haven't ran into a situation yet that warrants whipping every 15 turns. The only city where that would be the case is a city that is very high food production and has 1 or no hills to work. The thing is I rarely settle my cities so this situation occurs. If you're whipping when you already have multiple hills for the city to work then I think you're wasting commerce/population for nothing. You'll come out a little ahead in hammers but the one unhappy person is one less cottage that can be worked.

i try to build my commerce cities in hill free zones ;)
cottages everywhere (after a few years of fast growth)

My cottage cities all get their buildings from the whip

Late in the game those newly captured cities don't need markets and temples as you have an abundance of happy resources. So you whip like crazy and get all thsoe nice buildings in your city, but if you had let it grow out it would be size 10+ already and a lot of times generating 50+ beakers per turn already because the AI already developed the land/cottages. Sure, I can see if your city is starving due to cultural pressure then whip that pop and get some production out of it. But to whip repeatedly just to get buildings and kill your cities population/growth doesn't make sense to me.

Late in the game those newly captured cities don't need markets and temples as you have an abundance of happy resources. So you whip like crazy and get all thsoe nice buildings in your city, but if you had let it grow out it would be size 10+ already and a lot of times generating 50+ beakers per turn already because the AI already developed the land/cottages. Sure, I can see if your city is starving due to cultural pressure then whip that pop and get some production out of it. But to whip repeatedly just to get buildings and kill your cities population/growth doesn't make sense to me.

what about whipping a granary ;) ?

Shillen, you are obviously seeing this in terms of a cottage economy (CE), whereas I am thinking more in terms of a SE. If you work mostly cottages and towns in a new city (assuming that they were worked by the previous owner ;) ) then your re-growth rate will be slow after the whip and I can see your reluctance to lose the ability to work tiles. But you're consigning that city to producing base commerce with poor science and gold multipliers. A city with 50 commerce and 70% on the science slider will produce 35 beakers and 15 gold and without a courthouse it will cost say 15 gold in maintenance. So net output for your empire is 35 beakers against the extra civic costs for another city and say 8 pop (depends on difficulty level) but say another 15 gold . I'd say that city is not benefitting your economy much if at all. What is more, it will take a long time to contribute significantly if you build the granary, forge and courthouse using normal hammers while working towns and cottages for commerce.

My SE based approach to that city uses farms and high food and hammer tiles to rapidly build up the infrastructure. I will probably convert a few of the poorly worked cottages and hamlets and turn them to grassland or floodplain farms for extra food or even watermills for food / hammers. The build order I would use could be something like the following but I stay flexible...

a) Granary, forge to greatly increase the power of the whip.
b) theatre, library, university, observatory to increase culture and science
c) courthouse to cut maintenance
d) market, grocer, bank if the city is to run merchants and produce gold
e) airport, barracks, drydock if city is to help militarily
f) temple, cathedral if I have Sankore University/ Spiral Minaret /Angkor Wat

Only one of the last 3 options (d,e or f) would normally be built depending how the city is to be used.

Once the granary and forge are in place whipping buildings with OR gives 45 hammers per pop and the city can regrow 1 pop every 1 or 2 turns... say an average 90 hammers every 3 turns plus some hammers from other sources. That means a courthouse costs about 3 turns growth/ production and a temple only 2 with hammer overflow.

Over the first 20 turns I might invest something like 700 hammers (600 from slavery) in various buildings that significantly multiply the productivity and commerce equivalent. Then I allow the city to grow and start working any towns and feed more specialists. Compare that with your CE approach that might only whip once and use normal hammers which might give 200 hammers over the first 20 turns... granary and courthouse perhaps? but not forge or anything to multiply the base commerce.

I guess it really depends on the exact situation and the way you like to play the game but my point is only that in the right circumstances slavery can be very powerful. If you like to play without using its full potential or have other priorities in the game at that time then that is fine by me :)

In-game slavery is good, real-life slavery is bad, modern day slaves are entire nations... look at Argentina, :(

Late in the game those newly captured cities don't need markets and temples as you have an abundance of happy resources. So you whip like crazy and get all thsoe nice buildings in your city, but if you had let it grow out it would be size 10+ already and a lot of times generating 50+ beakers per turn already because the AI already developed the land/cottages. Sure, I can see if your city is starving due to cultural pressure then whip that pop and get some production out of it. But to whip repeatedly just to get buildings and kill your cities population/growth doesn't make sense to me.

The primary assumption is that any building you would be whipping is something you would otherwise be forced to build the "traditional" way. If you don't need a market in a city, it's foolish to whip it. Building the traditional way, you're going to have to do one of two things, get the building very slowly while working cottages, or get it quicker while "sacrificing" a citizen to work a mine (repeated as the availability of mines permits). Each citizen you "sacrifice" to a mine, is either converting 1 food per turn into 3 hammers or 2 food per turn into 4 hammers. Regardless, he's definitely not producing any commerce. Now, if instead of sacrificing the citizen to the mine, you'd sacrifced him to the whip, you're converting (let's say, given a granary) 15 food into 30 hammers right now. What's better, I could sacrifice another citizen alongside him and the rate becomes 29 food for 60 hammers, or another to get 42 for 90. To top it all off, you get the result of that production now, not in 15 turns.

As I said toward the beginning of this thread, the strength of slavery is in its ability to convert very large food surpluses into hammers at an efficient rate. If you don't have a large food surplus, then slavery is not going to be much (if any) better than working a mine. However, if you have a couple of bonus food tiles (or even 1 most of the time), then the capacity of slavery to convert food to hammers will typically outstrip the capacity of mines and will not cost as many population-turns.

Production in Civ4 is almost always based upon two premises. 1) You convert food into hammers at some rate. 2) It costs some number of population-turns to perform the conversion. Slavery provides a very effective balance of those two.

Of course, all of this discounts the bug in 1.61 that makes slavery horribly overpowered.

I found the guy saying try winning above monarch without whipping quite funny. I've won on immortal with only whipping units once or twice while an enemy was attacking the city. Whipping isn't as game-changing as some people in this thread make it out to be.

I'm not sure it's over-powered or game-changing either. I used it for the first time this weekend, also my first Immortal (or at least the first in a long time).

It was nice. It definitely came in handy. But it wasn't game-changing.

The biggest draw-back was that it didn't really cure the biggest high-level early stumbling-block: the low happiness limit. I'm a "convert" in the sense that I now think it's worth the one-turn of anarchy to adopt the civic, but I don't think it breaks the game.

Slavery gets buildings now, population later. Mines get population now, buildings later. Mines are better, IMO. The only time I'll whip is if the city doesn't have enough mines or if I need a unit or building immediately. Don't get me started on specialist economies as I think they are completely inferior to cottage economies.

edit: Oh and mines are costing you zero food if your city is at its happiness cap. Whereas whipping is still reducing the number of tiles you can work.

Slavery gets buildings now, population later. Mines get population now, buildings later. Mines are better, IMO. The only time I'll whip is if the city doesn't have enough mines or if I need a unit or building immediately. Don't get me started on specialist economies as I think they are completely inferior to cottage economies.

edit: Oh and mines are costing you zero food if your city is at its happiness cap. Whereas whipping is still reducing the number of tiles you can work.

food is a more powerful production force then hammers, and working a mine wil lmean ur not maturing a cottage. so I'll not only have more buildings up sooner than u, but all my cottages will be more developed then urs.

just to be fast and dirty, say we're whipping 6-3 for 90 hammers, 3-6 takes 40ish food I think. and I work one food bonus and all grass cottage. and u work 1 food bonus 2 grass cottage and 3 grass hills. so between 3 and 6 I'm accumulating whip power, AND maturing cottages. u are maturing fewer cottages then me, and are less efficient in ur production(food being worth effectively 2 hammers). then I whip from 6 down to 3, well at 3 I'm STILL working as many cottages as u r, as now we're both working 2. not to mention other issues u have like getting to size 6 much slower than me because u have to grow using hills, and that ur max size will be smaller then mine because u have to keep working mines.

food is a more powerful production force then hammers, and working a mine wil lmean ur not maturing a cottage. so I'll not only have more buildings up sooner than u, but all my cottages will be more developed then urs.

just to be fast and dirty, say we're whipping 6-3 for 90 hammers, 3-6 takes 40ish food I think. and I work one food bonus and all grass cottage. and u work 1 food bonus 2 grass cottage and 3 grass hills. so between 3 and 6 I'm accumulating whip power, AND maturing cottages. u are maturing fewer cottages then me, and are less efficient in ur production(food being worth effectively 2 hammers). then I whip from 6 down to 3, well at 3 I'm STILL working as many cottages as u r, as now we're both working 2. not to mention other issues u have like getting to size 6 much slower than me because u have to grow using hills, and that ur max size will be smaller then mine because u have to keep working mines.

The end of this paragraph makes no sense...I wouldn't work 3 mines until the city is max size already. I don't see how my max size is smaller than yours. It's not possible for it to be. You have the happiness penalty, not me.

You also cannot whip for 3 pop every 10 turns with only working 1 food bonus. It's not possible. If I'm working 3 mined grass hills I will obliterate your production from whipping unless you're working more than one food bonus or you're working a mined hill yourself.

Try to come up with feasible scenarios.

Slavery gets buildings now, population later. Mines get population now, buildings later.
Mines may get you population now, but that extra population is tied up working the mines. To produce an equivalent number of hammers, slavery often actually requires fewer population-turns.

Mines are better, IMO. The only time I'll whip is if the city doesn't have enough mines or if I need a unit or building immediately.
If you have a city with enough mines to put the entirety of your food surplus to use, then, yes, there's little reason to use the whip.

Don't get me started on specialist economies as I think they are completely inferior to cottage economies.

Absent representation, you'll get no argument from me. Otherwise, for the early game, I'd say it's a toss-up.

edit: Oh and mines are costing you zero food if your city is at its happiness cap. Whereas whipping is still reducing the number of tiles you can work.

Again, the citizen you have working a mine is not working a cottage, just as the citizen sacrificed to the whip is not producing working a cottage.

Absent representation, you'll get no argument from me. Otherwise, for the early game, I'd say it's a toss-up.

The problem comes because you can't mix the two. You can't just go SE early game and then switch to cottages as your cottages won't have grown. So if cottages are better in the second half of the game then cottages are better, period. edit: I guess if you plan to win militarily pre-industrial age then pyramids + SE could be as good, but I'm not a big warmonger myself.


Again, the citizen you have working a mine is not working a cottage, just as the citizen sacrificed to the whip is not producing working a cottage.

The difference is you're whipping 2 pop at a time and usually have to work even higher food tiles to regrow that 2 pop in time for the next whip. Not whipping will always be better commerce, but it might be slightly less production.

The end of this paragraph makes no sense...I wouldn't work 3 mines until the city is max size already. I don't see how my max size is smaller than yours. It's not possible for it to be. You have the happiness penalty, not me.

You also cannot whip for 3 pop every 10 turns with only working 1 food bonus. It's not possible. If I'm working 3 mined grass hills I will obliterate your production from whipping unless you're working more than one food bonus or you're working a mined hill yourself.

Try to come up with feasible scenarios.

if u dont work the mines then ur EVEN FARTHER behind me on production. I mean pretty soon u'll be 50-100 turns behind me in production, and then what? "yah but I'm at max size!" haha.

Anyone have a link to a good strategy guide for slavery? I'm becoming more and more interested in using it, especially since I'm playing as Aztecs a lot lately.

Not whipping will always be better commerce, but it might be slightly less production.
Actually, this belief was dispelled in the old micromanagement thread, http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=159109&page=10. The pertinent discussion begins at around post 198 and goes through 275. Be forewarned, though, it's not exactly light reading...;)

The reality is, for any given amount of production, slavery sacrifices less commerce in almost any scenario in which your supply of grassland hills is realistically constrained and you can attain a reasonable (+4) food surplus. In scenarios with only 1 surplus food and 1 grassland hill, mining naturally comes out ahead. But, if you have a food surplus higher than the number of available grassland hills, slavery is the better option.

Let's say you're at 6 population and a half-full food bar (16/32), working 1 floodpain cottage, 2 grassland cottages, and 3 grassland mines. Over 10 turns, you'll have produced 90 hammers and spent 30 population-turns working cottages.

If, instead, I whipped for 3 pop, I'd immediately get my 90 hammers. Then, let's say I have a 4 food tile to use when growing back to 6 pop (for a 5 total surplus). I'll be working 2 cottages for 2 turns (16/26 and 21/26 food). Then I'll be working 3 cottages for 3 turns (13/28, 18/28, 23/28). I'll be working 4 cottages for 3 more turns (14/30, 19/30, 24/30) before spending the last 2 turns working 5 cottages (27/30 and 30/30). If I sum that up, it's 35 pop-turns spent working cottages, 5 more than with the mines.

You could argue that failing to make use of the 4 food tile in the mined case is a mistake. The problem is, you can't make use of that 4 food tile unless you have additional hills available. Even then, you waste population-turns working the mine. In fact, given the availablility of that 4 food tile, there is no way that the mined case can output around 90 hammers over 10 turns and still spend as many pop-turns working cottages as the whipped case. It doesn't matter how many hills you have available (more resources would, of course, change that).

In general, you'd be vary hard pressed to find a well-placed commerce city that does not produce more commerce given an equivalent number of hammers though slavery than though the use of mines.

it is really interesting..

but how much is one more pop worth ??
maybe before the 10th turn you would have a happy face .. so you are at 6 (26/32) pop with mining and only at just 6 (15/32) with whipping... not all that good : how much value do you put into those 11 more food ?
you are making easy assumption to help your case. such as +1F only and 16 F to grow before 10t. etc.
in your mining exemple you 'loose' 1F production wothout profit until the dead line, while your whipping exemple has been tailord to make profit of all yield until your deadline.

For me I would have put a cottage on a plain getting food to 0 instead of a loosy 1 and got 5 less commerce but 10 more hammers than whipping, Work a plain mine instead of a grass mine. or something else: using some turns to work another mine loosing some food until I come back to 15/32 but earning some more hammer. that would have been a adequate model.
I think the two ways are mostly equivalent... unless you can rise your pop limit during the time limit. in that case, mining wins.

it is really interesting..

but how much is one more pop worth ??
maybe before the 10th turn you would have a happy face .. so you are at 6 (26/32) pop with mining and only at just 6 (15/32) with whipping... not all that good : how much value do you put into those 11 more food ?
you are making easy assumption to help your case. such as +1F only and 16 F to grow before 10t. etc.
in your mining exemple you 'loose' 1F production wothout profit until the dead line, while your whipping exemple has been tailord to make profit of all yield until your deadline.

For me I would have put a cottage on a plain getting food to 0 instead of a loosy 1 and got 5 less commerce but 10 more hammers than whipping, Work a plain mine instead of a grass mine. or something else: using some turns to work another mine loosing some food until I come back to 15/32 but earning some more hammer. that would have been a adequate model.
I think the two ways are mostly equivalent... unless you can rise your pop limit during the time limit. in that case, mining wins.

except they aren't equivalent, and its been proven they arent equivalent in very rigorous detail.

it is really interesting..

but how much is one more pop worth ??
maybe before the 10th turn you would have a happy face .. so you are at 6 (26/32) pop with mining and only at just 6 (15/32) with whipping... not all that good : how much value do you put into those 11 more food ?
you are making easy assumption to help your case. such as +1F only and 16 F to grow before 10t. etc.
in your mining exemple you 'loose' 1F production wothout profit until the dead line, while your whipping exemple has been tailord to make profit of all yield until your deadline.

For me I would have put a cottage on a plain getting food to 0 instead of a loosy 1 and got 5 less commerce but 10 more hammers than whipping, Work a plain mine instead of a grass mine. or something else: using some turns to work another mine loosing some food until I come back to 15/32 but earning some more hammer. that would have been a adequate model.
I think the two ways are mostly equivalent... unless you can rise your pop limit during the time limit. in that case, mining wins.

I think you're misunderstanding the example. The mined scenario is not running at +1 food surplus. One floodplain plus the city tile is exactly enough to feed the three mines. The two scenarios are anything but equivalent. The whipped case was about 16% better in commercial output.

I would challenge anyone to use the same set of tiles available in my example (1 floodplain cottage, 3 grassland mines, 1 4-food tile, unlimited grassland cottages), produce 90 (+/-5) hammers over 10 turns, and spend more than 35 turns working cottages without the use of slavery. You could even make use of plains mines and plains cottages if you so desire, though I will readily point out that these are strictly inferior to the other tiles available. Also, keep the starting population and food bar the same, otherwise the slavery example would be different.

Playing at Noble got a lot easier for me when I started using slavery, and that's without using it in any terribly strategic way either. Now I dominate the early game instead of just trying to keep up until mideval times when I always did pretty well.

i played the 1000ad scenario again, (my warlords conversion) but played as asoka, and those slavery +spiritual civic is so great i could rush units out with slavery, then change civics to the vassalge so that they then get +2 Xps, without any anarchy. this worked so well that the 6 starting war elephants paved their way to jeruselem and mecca, though its more of a great military achievement, the use of slavery churned out so many trebuchets and catapults that it kept me advancing.

the moral is that spiritual + slavery is the greatness.

i played the 1000ad scenario again, (my warlords conversion) but played as asoka, and those slavery +spiritual civic is so great i could rush units out with slavery, then change civics to the vassalge so that they then get +2 Xps, without any anarchy.

Why not just run slavery plus vassalage and/or theocracy at the same time? I like spritual, but being able to switch to benefit from two civics close together isn't much of an advantage when you can just run those civics at the same time normally.

I would challenge anyone to use the same set of tiles available in my example (1 floodplain cottage, 3 grassland mines, 1 4-food tile, unlimited grassland cottages), produce 90 (+/-5) hammers over 10 turns, and spend more than 35 turns working cottages without the use of slavery. You could even make use of plains mines and plains cottages if you so desire, though I will readily point out that these are strictly inferior to the other tiles available. Also, keep the starting population and food bar the same, otherwise the slavery example would be different.

While true that in this incredibly heavily tuned circumstance, and over this very short timespan slavery is (slightly - 3 turns more working cottages, not 5) better, I'm dubious as to its more widespread application. The lack of margin of error for the slavery being better makes me feel that someone put considerable time into setting these start conditions up. How about over the next ten turns? and the next ten? The non-slavery city is growing, whereas the the slavery one is remaining stagnant to maintain production. I would be more impressed by working over a longer time span, so the population growth issue cannot be overlooked like it can here. I would also be more impressed with a number of random setups taken from real games than the heavily tuned setup above.

Consider the above scenario over 20 turns though. After 10 turns, with proper management, the setup is as follows:

Slavery: City is at size 6 (and the food bar is empty now). It's produced 90 hammers and 35 turns working cottages. You're the slavery expert. What's the most you can get out of the above tiles in another 10 turns, given you're starting from an empty food bar? Or to be fair, work over the whole 20 turns rather than looking to peak at 10. Aiming for 180 hammers output, what's the best you can do on the cottages?

Non-slavery: City is now at size 7, with 4 food in the box (4/34). (City uses 3 hills, two g/cot, one fp/cot for the first 8 turns, adds another g/cot for the last two). TO date is has produced 90 hammers and 32 turns working cottages.

Now I just let this run using the tiles above. After another 10 turns, I've produced another 90 hammers, and 40 turns working cottages. It hasn't grown again, but it's up to 24/34 food and would grow again during the next ten turn slot. Grand total over 20 turns: 180 hammers, 72 turns working cottages.

I challenge you to produce 180 hammers (+/-5) over 20 turns and get more than 72 turns working cottages using slavery.

N.B. I was later reminded I'd forgotten granaries. See later post, but my point still stands.

I think the anti slavery proponents miss one thing in their equations...they cite that production/commerce/city size is equal or greater at the end of the simulation, therefore it is better...here is the missed factor in all these detailed mathematical examples.

Over a 20 turn period, even if numbers work out the same or slightly better in favor of the non-slavery build, you have to look at WHEN you get whatever it is you're rushing...forge, library, military unit...

Depending on game situation, whereas base numbers may be equal or higher, having that forge 20 extra turns, library 20 extra turns, settling a city 20 turns earlier, or having that macemen 20 turns earlier, can be enough to allow the bonuses to more than make up and surpass the difference, secure a vital piece of land, or be able to launch an overbalanced assault aggainst an opponent.

We love to crack the numbers to improve our game, but please do think of civ4 as empire building in a vacuum...so much is going on around us that an extra 20 turns use of a unit/building, is often worth the losses...

Joe

Seems to me there's no right answer. No matter whether you use Slavery or not, you get some sort of benefit. You can maximize that benefit by your play style.

It's exceedingly difficult (if not impossible) to compare between two different play styles. You get one person pointing out a benefit and another person pointing out a totally different benefit. Yeah, it's nice having a Forge earlier (or whatever), but it's also nice having extra commerce coming in and one more developed Town (or whatever). Which is better? Both. Neither.

Wodan

I think the anti slavery proponents miss one thing in their equations...they cite that production/commerce/city size is equal or greater at the end of the simulation, therefore it is better...here is the missed factor in all these detailed mathematical examples.

Over a 20 turn period, even if numbers work out the same or slightly better in favor of the non-slavery build, you have to look at WHEN you get whatever it is you're rushing...forge, library, military unit...

I'm well aware that there are advantages to completing some things (e.g. early settlers) earlier, and indeed this is where slavery shines, and I make use of it. What I'm arguing against is the persistent view that slavery is always better than conventional production with hammers, which is often argued, and supported with the kind of short term examples as above. Slavery is good where the time delay between starting and finishing a project significantly decreases its usefulness, but as a primary production source you're doing yourself concealed long term damage through the lack of population growth.

I'm well aware that there are advantages to completing some things (e.g. early settlers) earlier, and indeed this is where slavery shines, and I make use of it. What I'm arguing against is the persistent view that slavery is always better than conventional production with hammers, which is often argued, and supported with the kind of short term examples as above. Slavery is good where the time delay between starting and finishing a project significantly decreases its usefulness, but as a primary production source you're doing yourself concealed long term damage through the lack of population growth.

no, you aren't. there are of course lots of examples and ways to consider this. but I try to keep it as simple as possible, and let the smart ppl in the room work the logic out from there.

lets say u decide to either get ur production from grassland farms or plains hills(easy because one is all food, the other is all hammers). a grassland farm in a city w/ a granary using the whip is worth about 2.9 hammers/food at size 4ish, and this slows down to 1.5 or so hammers/food at size 11. so a size 11 city whipping 11-10 a grassland farm is worth effectively 4.5 hammers/turn, which is STILL at size 11! more than a plains hill. and at size 4 its not even close, a grassland farm makes nearly 9 hammers/turn or more than double the plains hill. effectively no matter how many plains hills u want to work u could replace them w/ grassland farms and get more production(and grassland farms aren't even that good).

food is just the best, most efficient way to generate production. and the fact that u get to work cottages(a hugely important thing) while generating ur food "production" just puts it way over the top.

Yavoon, I have no idea where you are pulling some of the numbers from, so your example is not helpful. To take for example whipping a single pop point at about size 4; this costs on the order of 26 food, and gets you 30 hammers. It's nowhere near the 2.9 hammers per food you're quoting. Your example is messy, and badly explained (and when I crunch the numbers myself, seriously innacurate).

I direct you to my earlier challenge, where I have expressed my view that, even in an example where the numbers seem to have been tuned to benefit slavery, in the long run, on pure hammer and commerce output, you are doing yourself more harm than good. Please demonstrate using this example, and clearly presented maths how slavery is better.

Yavoon, I have no idea where you are pulling some of the numbers from, so your example is not helpful. To take for example whipping a single pop point at about size 4; this costs on the order of 26 food, and gets you 30 hammers. It's nowhere near the 2.9 hammers per food you're quoting. Your example is messy, and badly explained (and when I crunch the numbers myself, seriously innacurate).

I direct you to my earlier challenge, where I have expressed my view that, even in an example where the numbers seem to have been tuned to benefit slavery, in the long run, on pure hammer and commerce output, you are doing yourself more harm than good. Please demonstrate using this example, and clearly presented maths how slavery is better.

yes, and ur wrong. and I think part of the reason ur wrong is u can't even use the correct numbers. growing from size 3-4 costs 13 food(remember our cities have granaries). and u get 30 hammers when u whip away that population point.

my example is not messy, its actually simple. it strips away all the stupid extraneous things ppl are talking about and clearly shows that food is far more efficient than hammers at production.

To take for example whipping a single pop point at about size 4; this costs on the order of 26 food, and gets you 30 hammers.

Assuming you have a granary (which is, of course, critical for pop rushing), this is not even close. If you're at size 4 (normal speed), at 27/28 food in the box, you rush 1 pop which puts you at 27/26. If you generate surplus of X food, next turn you're at (14+X)/28. Regrowing to 27/28 takes (27-14-X) more food. So the total food needed to replace your lost pop is 13.

Since when has 30/13 equalled 2.9? Thanks DaviddesJ for bringing some mathematical rigour, but yavoon still seems to be pulling numbers out of thin air. Still it's nice he reminded me about granaries. I've actually been unfair to both the non-slavery and the slavery example by not including it.

On the slavery side you'd have 15 food in the box after 10 turns, it wouldn't be empty, sorry about that slip up. Still, even if you repeat what you did in the first ten turns (which doesn't quite work due t having 15, not 16 food in the box), you're behind on cottage turns worked.

On the non-slavery line the city would have had 16 food in the box from the granary after it grew to size 7, so after 10 turns it would be at 20/34. After another 7 turns at 2 food surplus it would grow to size 8, bringing another cottage into use for three more turns before reaching 20. Thus the non slavery example now requires you to beat 75 turns of working cottages and produce 90 hammers rather than 72, and the city will now finish at size 8 with a food box at 24/38.

Since when has 30/13 equalled 2.9? Thanks DaviddesJ for bringing some mathematical rigour, but yavoon still seems to be pulling numbers out of thin air. Still it's nice he reminded me about granaries. I've actually been unfair to both the non-slavery and the slavery example by not including it.

On the slavery side you'd have 15 food in the box after 10 turns, it wouldn't be empty, sorry about that slip up. Still, even if you repeat what you did in the first ten turns (which doesn't quite work due t having 15, not 16 food in the box), you're behind on cottage turns worked.

On the non-slavery line the city would have had 16 food in the box from the granary after it grew to size 7, so after 10 turns it would be at 20/34. After another 7 turns at 2 food surplus it would grow to size 8, bringing another cottage into use for three more turns before reaching 20. Thus the non slavery example now requires you to beat 75 turns of working cottages and produce 90 hammers rather than 72, and the city will now finish at size 8 with a food box at 24/38.

2.9 is just some number a little below 3. its actually 60 hammers for 25 food. if thats ur big complaint, then I'd point out that the food still comes out massively ahead.

like I said, on complex examples it has been proven very rigorously that slavery annhilates non slavery. I just gave a simple example that the more intelligent ppl in the room can expand on themselves to figure it out on their own terms.

2.9 is just some number a little below 3. its actually 60 hammers for 25 food. if thats ur big complaint, then I'd point out that the food still comes out massively ahead.

So we're actually talking 2.3 or 2.4? Then please use those numbers rather than random guesswork.

like I said, on complex examples it has been proven very rigorously that slavery annhilates non slavery. I just gave a simple example that the more intelligent ppl in the room can expand on themselves to figure it out on their own terms.

Leaving aside thinly veiled insults, can you present, or direct me to, the aforementioned rigourous proof? I've offered you an example, chosen by one who favours the slavery approach, to use to demonstrate that slavery is better and so far you are either unwilling, or incapable of doing so.

Seems to me there's no right answer. No matter whether you use Slavery or not, you get some sort of benefit. You can maximize that benefit by your play style.

It's exceedingly difficult (if not impossible) to compare between two different play styles. You get one person pointing out a benefit and another person pointing out a totally different benefit. Yeah, it's nice having a Forge earlier (or whatever), but it's also nice having extra commerce coming in and one more developed Town (or whatever). Which is better? Both. Neither.

Wodan

I think it is often easy to compare two play styles as long as they start from the same condition and do the same things in game in terms of wars and capturing cities. Look at the comparative game I played with Sisiutil's ALC 7 Here: see Post 432 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4419125#post4419125). There I compared running Slavery (my way from 720AD to 1530) with Sisiutil running Slavery (720 to 1140) and Caste System (from 1140 until 1530). Over that period I was using the whip aggressively and Sisiutil was less aggressive and then with Caste System lost the ability to whip in favour of free choice of specialists. In that comparative game I tried very hard to accomplish the same military achievements (take the same cities) and was successful and at the same time I researched the same techs (at least). That allowed my version of the SE to be compared with Sisiutil's (who was advised by many other players). It was relatively easy (and not difficult as you assert) to compare the overall effects of running the economy in these two different ways and to draw valid conclusions from that comparison.

My version of the game showed 2 things clearly :
a) Slavery is superior to the Caste System in an economy that has many cities with high food (e.g. a SE)
b) A SE need not run its Research Slider at 0% and in fact is significantly stronger when it can run at 100% for long periods (contrary to the advice of many SE players who suggest always running at 0%).

So we're actually talking 2.3 or 2.4? Then please use those numbers rather than random guesswork.



Leaving aside thinly veiled insults, can you present, or direct me to, the aforementioned rigourous proof? I've offered you an example, chosen by one who favours the slavery approach, to use to demonstrate that slavery is better and so far you are either unwilling, or incapable of doing so.

there have been huge slavery abuse threads before. u can look for them if u like, I think its easy to go from my example to the conclusion. but it takes some abstract thought ability. I dont think ur ready to make that transition yet though, because ur still quibling over numbers that no matter the interpretation are severely not in ur favor.

I've read the previous slavery threads. Aside from a bug involving modifiers from forges and so on, that was removed in Warlords, I couldn't find the rigourous proof you claim (and again are unwilling or incapable of presenting). They still suffered from the issue that they examined small time spans, and neglected the population stagnating effect of using slavery as a primary production source.

As to your comment about quibbling over numbers, proper analysis of the maths involved is important to examining these cases and you using numbers which are; a) guesses and b) significantly wrong, is not helping. I am open to a rigourous proof of whether slavery or non-slavery is better as a primary production source. I have expressed, and backed up, my view that the earlier discussion in this thread is flawed by operating over too short a timespan. If someone has a rigourous demonstration that slavery is superior, allowing for that query I've made, I would be pleased to see it.

I've read the previous slavery threads. Aside from a bug involving modifiers from forges and so on, that was removed in Warlords, I couldn't find the rigourous proof you claim (and again are unwilling or incapable of presenting). They still suffered from the issue that they examined small time spans, and neglected the population stagnating effect of using slavery as a primary production source.

As to your comment about quibbling over numbers, proper analysis of the maths involved is important to examining these cases and you using numbers which are; a) guesses and b) significantly wrong, is not helping. I am open to a rigourous proof of whether slavery or non-slavery is better as a primary production source. I have expressed, and backed up, my view that the earlier discussion in this thread is flawed by operating over too short a timespan. If someone has a rigourous demonstration that slavery is superior, allowing for that query I've made, I would be pleased to see it.

ok I'll try a few more times, first my numbers are not significantly wrong, and they dont change the conclusion at all.

second the population stagnation is a complete myth. and again, in my example it is very easy to see the myth. sans ur hills and sans my farms we produce the EXACT SAME FOOD, if I use the food from my farms to whip and u use the hammers from ur hills to produce, u will not be one iota bigger than me in size(worked non hill tiles), ever. it is mathematically impossible.

like I said, if u have some abstract thought ability u can work out the problem.

I have used the example presented by Malekithe to demonstrate that the non-slavery case grows while the slavery case does not, for an equal production output and a cottage output that in the long term is greater than the slavery example. I have stuck to maths there to deal with facts rather than debatable issues. I made an error with granaries which you have pointed out, and I thank you for that, but when I allowed for it I still reached the same conclusion.

Please, give me a properly presented example, which doesn't suffer from the short time span problem I highlighted. Malekithe has presented one you could use as a starting point, but please present any properly worked example to demonstrate your point, not vague descriptions.

second the population stagnation is a complete myth. and again, in my example it is very easy to see the myth. sans ur hills and sans my farms we produce the EXACT SAME FOOD, if I use the food from my farms to whip and u use the hammers from ur hills to produce, u will not be one iota bigger than me in size(worked non hill tiles), ever. it is mathematically impossible.

As an example, this lacks rigour, because you've forgotten that grassland hills produce food as well as hammers. This food can therefore go to city growth, while retaining the same production as the slavery case. In any case as you have made clear, food and hammers are not 1:1 interchangeable.

As an example, this lacks rigour, because you've forgotten that grassland hills produce food as well as hammers. This food can therefore go to city growth, while retaining the same production as the slavery case. In any case as you have made clear, food and hammers are not 1:1 interchangeable.

my example is meant for ease of use, its also true that slavers don't use grassland farms for production, they use cottages. so in essence I used the inferior tile on both cases.

grassland hills help ppl who dont want to slave whip, but the reason they help is they produce food. which is superior. which helps my case:).

like I said, the example is meant to be simple so the clever ppl can take it and work it out. there are thousands of other considerations in game. happiness cap, war weariness, emergency production, newly captured cities, all of which help slavery. so I'm really leaving out a whole lot that could help me just to keep it simple.

Yavoon, I have now asked you on a number of occasions to present a proper example. Your above comments are vague, and of dubious validity. They belong to the "hand waving" school of explanation, lacking in both rigour and in your case factual accuracy.

my example is meant for ease of use, its also true that slavers don't use grassland farms for production, they use cottages. so in essence I used the inferior tile on both cases.

Well except on floodplain a cottage isn't giving you surplus food, so whether from grassland farms or not you need a surplus from somewhere. Have you considered presenting some numbers to demonstrate how these tiles are in practice inferior?

like I said, the example is meant to be simple so the clever ppl can take it and work it out. there are thousands of other considerations in game. happiness cap, war weariness, emergency production, newly captured cities, all of which help slavery. so I'm really leaving out a whole lot that could help me just to keep it simple.

...and equally neglects issues such as trade route production, unhappiness due to whipping and so on, to say nothing of the population growth issue I have repeatedly queried you about, and received no remotely adequate response. Your example is not so much simple as vague to the point of non-existence, and I'm not at all impressed by your persistent veiled insults on the lines of "a clever person would understand it" when you present an extremely vague explanation completely lacking in any substance to understand. So go with your veiled insults; assume I'm stupid, and spell out every last detail of your argument. I'm not interested in simple. Present as complicated an example as you like, but be specific. Rather than hinting you have the perfect explanation, but no one would be stupid enough to require it, try actually presenting the explanation you have so far been unwilling or incpable of giving. Analysis requires numbers, not the inaccurate hand waving style responses you've been giving me.

Yavoon, I have now asked you on a number of occasions to present a proper example. Your above comments are vague, and of dubious validity. They belong to the "hand waving" school of explanation, lacking in both rigour and in your case factual accuracy.



Well except on floodplain a cottage isn't giving you surplus food, so whether from grassland farms or not you need a surplus from somewhere. Have you considered presenting some numbers to demonstrate how these tiles are in practice inferior?



...and equally neglects issues such as trade route production, unhappiness due to whipping and so on, to say nothing of the population growth issue I have repeatedly queried you about, and received no remotely adequate response. Your example is not so much simple as vague to the point of non-existence, and I'm not at all impressed by your persistent veiled insults on the lines of "a clever person would understand it" when you present an extremely vague explanation completely lacking in any substance to understand. So go with your veiled insults; assume I'm stupid, and spell out every last detail of your argument. I'm not interested in simple. Present as complicated an example as you like, but be specific. Rather than hinting you have the perfect explanation, but no one would be stupid enough to require it, try actually presenting the explanation you have so far been unwilling or incpable of giving. Analysis requires numbers, not the inaccurate hand waving style responses you've been giving me.

surplus food is a red herring. a cottage gives u 2 food, that is better than 1 food and worse than 3 food, and really ur complaining about where excess food is going to come from and ur the person using hills? hahah. this is as much a red herring as ur stagnation myth and ur attempts to complain about the food/hammer ratio.

ur trying to draw me into the trees, when all we need is to look at the forest, which is why this thread has dragged on as it is. its really not even a contest in-game terms that slavery is more powerful. I'm just trying to give ppl a tool that they can start to realize that.

As so you drop from the vague and content free argument to the lowest of the low in terms of debate:

its really not even a contest in-game terms that slavery is more powerful

No qualifiers, no explanation, no numbers, not even the remotest effort at explanation. Merely an "it's obviously right because I say so".

ur trying to draw me into the trees, when all we need is to look at the forest

Irrelevant analogy. Such padding does not hide the near total lack of content of your posts.

Does anyone capable of stringing together a coherent argument have a response to my query regarding the timespan issue in Malekithe's example? I don't particularly care whether I'm proved to be right or wrong on this issue, but I would like someone to at least have a decent attempt at responding to my query. Oddly enough Yavoon, I'm interested to know whether or not slavery is the most effective primary production source, and just because I feel there is an error in an argument presented for slavery does not mean I'm biased against it.

Yavoon, don't waste either my time or yours my posting any more of the vacuous rubbish above. A) numbers, B) details. These are not complicated requirements for a useful post.

As so you drop from the vague and content free argument to the lowest of the low in terms of debate:



No qualifiers, no explanation, no numbers, not even the remotest effort at explanation. Merely an "it's obviously right because I say so".



Irrelevant analogy. Such padding does not hide the near total lack of content of your posts.

Does anyone capable of stringing together a coherent argument have a response to my query regarding the timespan issue in Malekithe's example? I don't particularly care whether I'm proved to be right or wrong on this issue, but I would like someone to at least have a decent attempt at responding to my query. Oddly enough Yavoon, I'm interested to know whether or not slavery is the most effective primary production source, and just because I feel there is an error in an argument presented for slavery does not mean I'm biased against it.

Yavoon, don't waste either my time or yours my posting any more of the vacuous rubbish above. A) numbers, B) details. These are not complicated requirements for a useful post.

ur complaining about things I've already conceded to. its possible u want to be arguing w/ someone else. like I already said, other threads have done this in rigorous detail. I was merely trying to give smart ppl a tool that could start them on the road to understanding the superiority of slavery. I tore apart some of ur more blatant myths, but ur right I dont want to go into gigantic detail, because its already been done.

so plz, for ur own sanity stop trying to whine and ***** me into doing something I said from the start I had no interest in doing. maybe u just like to hear urself flame, because I mean why read my posts that explicitly say what I will and will not explain and continue to cry like a child that I'm not doing something I already said I wouldn't?

Okay, so I've been asked to draw out my example for an additional 10 turns. This, of course, assumes you've not yet grown to your happiness cap. For the sake of argument, we'll assume a happiness cap of 7. If you'd like to make this 8 or 9, then we could, but it would change the way both cases are managed (without substantially changing the conclusions that could be drawn).

Before I jump into the specific examples and the overly complicated charts, I'd like to repeat the principle that ensures that, in low(ish) pop scenarios with a food surplus that outstrips the available hills, slavery is better able to convert excess food into hammers. If you'd like that excess food to go into growth instead, that's fine, but in either case you'll be sacrificing some degree of hammer output in order to acheive that growth. For whipping, you'd whip less often; for non-whipping, you'd spend time working farms instead of mines.

So, the whipped case...

This was very straight-forward. The only real rule behind it was to always work the highest food tiles available. Since those are often grassland-cottages, so much the better. It's running at a 5-food surplus the entire time. This comes from the center tile (+2), a floodplain cottage (+1), and a 4-food tile (+2, unirrigated rice).

Turn FoodBar Pop Food Hammers Cottages
0 16/26 3 5 90 2
1 21/26 3 5 0 2
2 13/28 4 5 0 3
3 18/28 4 5 0 3
4 23/28 4 5 0 3
5 14/30 5 5 0 4
6 19/30 5 5 0 4
7 24/30 5 5 0 4
8 29/30 5 5 0 4
9 19/32 6 5 0 5
10 24/26 3 5 90 2
11 16/28 4 5 0 3
12 21/28 4 5 0 3
13 26/28 4 5 0 3
14 17/30 5 5 0 4
15 22/30 5 5 0 4
16 27/30 5 5 0 4
17 17/32 6 5 0 5
18 22/32 6 5 0 5
19 27/32 6 5 0 6
20 16/34 7 - - -

SUM 180 73


So, in order to get an output of 180 hammers, 73 turns could be spent working cottages. Not too shabby.

Now, the non-whipped case.

This is a little more complicated from a tile management perspective. I had to throw in a plains hill in order for the simultaneous goals of growth and an equivalent hammer output to be realized. Note that this is now requiring 4 hills, a plot that would oft-times be better suited for a production city. Specifically, we now have enough hills to fully consume our food surplus, that is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a production city. I'll just throw the chart up first and explain the tile usage afterwards.

Turn FoodBar Pop Food Hammers Cottages
0 16/32 6 5 0 5
1 21/32 6 5 0 5
2 26/32 6 5 0 5
3 31/32 6 1 10 2
4 16/34 7 0 13 2
5 16/34 7 0 13 2
6 16/34 7 0 13 2
7 16/34 7 0 13 2
8 16/34 7 0 13 2
9 16/34 7 0 13 2
10 16/34 7 0 9 4
11 16/34 7 0 9 4
12 16/34 7 0 9 4
13 16/34 7 0 9 4
14 16/34 7 0 9 4
15 16/34 7 0 9 4
16 16/34 7 0 9 4
17 16/34 7 0 9 4
18 16/34 7 0 9 4
19 16/34 7 0 9 4
20 - -

SUM 178 69


There are 3 distinct phases in the tile utilization patterns above. To start out, they're trying to grow as quickly as possible, working all available food tiles and cottages (similar to the whipped case). One turn is spent transitioning to the next phase. During this transition, I'm working the floodplain, 2 grass-mines, 1 plains-mine, the 4-food tile, and a cottage. This give a surplus food of 1 and ensures that the two examples end at the same point in the food bar. After securing the growth to 7, the city begins spitting out as many hammers as possible, working all available mines and food tiles (3 grass-mines, 1 plains-mine, 1 floodplain, 1 4-food, 1 cottage). During the last phase, we've laid off the mines a bit (no longer working the plains-mine) in order to spend time working more cottages.

After all was said and done, the whipped case had higher output in both hammers and commerce (and received those hammers sooner).

Glad to see someone with some numbers :) .

I'm not sure quite I agree with your numbers for the non-slavery case, though when I run it through I do come out on the slavery side (I made a mistake with that floodplain cottage on my first run through). Can I run mine by you, and see if you can spot any errors?

OK, first phase (turn 1-3) I use the floodplain cottage, 4 grassland cottage, and the 4 food tile. With the 2 food from the city tile that's a 5 food surplus, so the population grows to 7 after turn 3. Second phase (turn 4-6), I keep using the same setup as above, with one extra grassland cottage, and grow to size 8 after turn 6. At size eight I then switch to using 5 grassland hills, a grassland cottage, the four food tile, and the floodplain cottage. This is phase three (turn 7-19). For turn 20, I then switch to using 8 grassland cottages.

Turn FoodBar Pop Food Hammers Cottages
0 16/32 6 5 0 5
1 21/32 6 5 0 5
2 26/32 6 5 0 5
3 31/32 6 5 0 5
4 20/34 7 5 0 6
5 25/34 7 5 0 6
6 30/34 7 5 0 6
7 18/34 8 0 15 2
8 18/34 8 0 15 2
9 18/34 8 0 15 2
10 18/34 8 0 15 2
11 18/34 8 0 15 2
12 18/34 8 0 15 2
13 18/34 8 0 15 2
14 18/34 8 0 15 2
15 18/34 8 0 15 2
16 18/34 8 0 15 2
17 18/34 8 0 15 2
18 18/34 8 0 15 2
19 18/34 8 0 0 8
20 - -

SUM 180 70

That gives a slightly better total, though still behind the slavery numbers. I'm aware I've slightly gone outside the criteria with there being an unlimited number of grassland hills available, and assuming the happiness limit is above 7, but the fixed nature of the terrain in this example as I've said concerns me. Doesn't matter anyway as they're still behind the slavery numbers. Would it make a difference either way if there were more hills, or more high food tiles available? Again the timespan is very short compared to a game, restricting the growth on the non-slavery side. I'd expect at some point with higher population there'd be a cross-over where non-slavery becomes better. Running even longer trials will be a pain, so I'll set up a spreadsheet rather than doing it manually, but it's getting late here so it can wait.

I think it is often easy to compare two play styles as long as they start from the same condition and do the same things in game in terms of wars and capturing cities. Look at the comparative game I played with Sisiutil's ALC 7 Here: see Post 432 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4419125#post4419125). There I compared running Slavery (my way from 720AD to 1530) with Sisiutil running Slavery (720 to 1140) and Caste System (from 1140 until 1530). Over that period I was using the whip aggressively and Sisiutil was less aggressive and then with Caste System lost the ability to whip in favour of free choice of specialists. In that comparative game I tried very hard to accomplish the same military achievements (take the same cities) and was successful and at the same time I researched the same techs (at least). That allowed my version of the SE to be compared with Sisiutil's (who was advised by many other players). It was relatively easy (and not difficult as you assert) to compare the overall effects of running the economy in these two different ways and to draw valid conclusions from that comparison.
A sample set of ONE? Statisticians would say you need a sample set in the hundreds, at minimum, before claiming any kind of trend from which to draw a conclusion. One game may be enough to postulate a theory, but to claim "valid conclusions" and "clearly" shown points as axiomatic facts is a bit much.

Anyway, I'm not disagreeing that Slavery is better for SE than Caste System. I usually do it myself. Only when you get a city which really pushes the boundaries does caste system become a good choice in my opinion. (e.g., a super science city)

Wodan

:whipped: Slavery....convince me

Because it gives +5 happiness - ooops. sorry, that's another game (also you need rubber resource). :please: :whipped:

I'm aware I've slightly gone outside the criteria with there being an unlimited number of grassland hills available, and assuming the happiness limit is above 7, but the fixed nature of the terrain in this example as I've said concerns me.

In your scenario, I'm actually a little surprised that the slavery example was able to come out ahead. The city you've chosen is a very powerful production spot. 5 grassland hills and a couple of bonus food tiles is more than I get in some games. Specifically, 5 grassland hills is the perfect synergy for the amount of bonus food in the example. You're able to convert the entirety of your food surplus into hammers at the most efficient rate normally possible (once you grow your population to work enough tiles).

There is one caveat to the effectiveness of slavery. When a city has enough hills (predominantly grassland-hills preferably) to fully utilize any food bonus tiles and enough room under the happiness cap to work all those hills, I would recomend that city not employ slavery to the degree that other cities might. However, in a city with a couple of bonus food tiles (say wheat and fish), there's almost never going to be a case in which they can actually put all that food to use except for slavery. Slavery's power is in its ability to convert large food surpluses into hammers without you having to spend population-turns working mines (which may or may not even be possible).

In your scenario, I'm actually a little surprised that the slavery example was able to come out ahead. The city you've chosen is a very powerful production spot. 5 grassland hills and a couple of bonus food tiles is more than I get in some games. Specifically, 5 grassland hills is the perfect synergy for the amount of bonus food in the example. You're able to convert the entirety of your food surplus into hammers at the most efficient rate normally possible (once you grow your population to work enough tiles).

I was actually quite surprised as well, but now I've tried running it further it seems to be just due to the limited timespan again. 20 turns just wasn't long enough to grow the city to the point where it could use all the hills and a competititve number of cottages. Running for 40 turns, growing to size 9 or 10 wasn't a major part of the timespan.

Turn Food Bar Pop Food Hammers Cottages
1 16/32 6 5 0 5
2 21/32 6 5 0 5
3 26/32 6 5 0 5
4 31/32 6 5 0 5
5 20/34 7 5 0 5
6 25/34 7 5 0 5
7 30/34 7 5 0 5
8 18/36 8 5 0 5
9 23/36 8 5 0 5
10 28/36 8 5 0 5
11 33/36 8 5 0 5
12 20/38 9 2 9 5
13 22/38 9 2 9 5
14 24/38 9 2 9 5
15 26/38 9 2 9 5
16 28/38 9 2 9 5
17 30/38 9 2 9 5
18 32/38 9 2 9 5
19 34/38 9 2 9 5
20 36/38 9 2 9 5
21 19/40 10 0 15 4
22 19/40 10 0 15 4
23 19/40 10 0 15 4
24 19/40 10 0 15 4
25 19/40 10 0 15 4
26 19/40 10 0 15 4
27 19/40 10 0 15 4
28 19/40 10 0 15 4
29 19/40 10 0 15 4
30 19/40 10 0 15 4
31 19/40 10 0 15 4
32 19/40 10 0 15 4
33 19/40 10 0 15 4
34 19/40 10 0 15 4
35 19/40 10 0 15 4
36 19/40 10 0 15 4
37 19/40 10 0 15 4
38 19/40 10 0 15 4
39 19/40 10 0 15 4
40 19/40 10 0 15 4




Total hammers: 366
Total cottages: 176

While I'm not certain, I think that's rather beyond what the above slavery example can do under those conditions. Obviously the city is now stagnant, but at a level with production and cottage use beyond the slavery example. The city could obviously be grown further, at temporary expense of production to bring more cottages into use.

I think this is what was bugging me about the way this example's set up. With only 3 hills at three hammers apiece, then it's fairly obvious that if the slavery example can produce 90 hammers on a 10 turn cycle or better it can never be overtaken on production. As such, it would be impossible to ever produce a case where the non-slavery case would give more of both hammers and cottage turns worked, hence giving a definitively better demonstration.

The problem here is that I don't think it's realistic to have only 3 tiles in a city radius capable of hammer production. If there are more than three (even if they're also high food tiles) the slavery case begins to suffer, since it won't be using even the few hammers on high food tiles all the time. More than 6 hammer producing tiles, and it'll never use some of them. The hammers don't have to be from hills, they can be from absolutely any terrain type and improvement. There are plenty of tiles which generate 2 food and at least one hammer when improved, which would remove the problem of slowing the growth in the non-slavery case to bost production.

In your presented situation (very small number of high food tiles (2) and no hammers except from a small number of hills (3)) I agree slavery is better for pure production, though in the long run I would be inclined to turn this into a commerce city. Once grown the non-slavery case could use far more cottages than the slavery case, at the expense of production which is not all that much weaker.

Alright, I'll take the slavery example out to 40 turns...

Turn FoodBar Pop Food Hammers Cottages
0 16/32 6 5 0 5
1 21/32 6 5 0 5
2 26/32 6 5 0 5
3 26/32 6 5 0 5
4 31/32 6 5 0 5
5 20/34 7 5 0 6
6 25/34 7 5 0 6
7 31/34 7 5 0 6
8 19/36 8 5 0 7
9 24/36 8 5 0 7
10 29/36 8 5 0 7
11 34/28 4 5 120 3
12 25/30 5 5 0 4
13 15/32 6 5 0 5
14 20/32 6 5 0 5
15 25/32 6 5 0 5
16 30/32 6 5 0 5
17 19/34 7 5 0 6
18 24/34 7 5 0 6
19 29/34 7 5 0 6
20 17/36 8 5 0 6
21 22/36 8 5 0 6
22 27/36 8 5 0 6
23 32/28 4 5 120 3
24 23/30 5 5 0 4
25 28/30 5 5 0 4
26 18/32 6 5 0 5
27 23/32 6 5 0 5
28 28/32 6 5 0 5
29 17/34 7 5 0 5
30 22/34 7 5 0 5
31 27/34 7 5 0 5
32 32/34 7 5 0 5
33 20/36 8 5 0 5
34 25/36 8 5 0 5
35 30/36 8 5 0 5
36 35/28 4 5 120 3
37 26/30 5 5 0 4
38 16/32 6 5 0 5
39 21/32 6 5 - -

SUM 360 200


360 Hammers and 200 cottages... Unless you were really attached to those 6 extra hammers, I think it's safe to say slavery did better.

I'm starting to very much dislike the unlimited happiness cap you're giving these cities, though. It strikes me as less realistic than the restriction on available hills. Of course you can find a happiness cap where mines outproduce slavery. It's always going to be true that slavery gets less efficient as your population gets bigger, especially if the largest food surplus the city can put together is a measly +5.

EDIT: Another thing that's bothering me. You speak of population growth as if it's impossible in the slavery case. However, who says you have to whip every 10-15 turns? The mined case took time off the mines to grow it's population. The slavery case can do the exact same thing; lay off the whip in order to grow. You can't, as a point of comparison between the two, argue that your population will grow faster with the mines than with slavery. The difference lies in how they convert food into hammers, not how they convert food into growth.

OK, to make things comparable, assume you have a slavery city and a non-slavery city, starting with all citizens working cottages. How does the non-slavery city produce hammers? By switching one citizen to a grassy hill, producing -1 food and +3 hammers. But, to keep everything equal, that -1 food has to be made up by switching another citizen to an irrigated grassland. So, two cottages have to be sacrificed for 3 hammers.

With a slavery city, giving up those two cottages will produce 2 extra food. So any time it takes less than 20 food to produce a pop point slavery comes out ahead. With plains hills, it's three cottages for 4 hammers and the break-even point is 22.5 food for growth.

With the 3-4 example and a granary, slavery would produce 20/13s, or just over 1.5 times as much production.

Once a city reaches a pop limit, non-slavery gains an advantage in that the slavery city is normally running below the pop limit - an average of 1.5 if it's constantly whipping population in 2 citizen increments. In the 3-4 example, if the city were entirely focused on production, the slavery city would have an average of 2.5 citizens, working 1.5 times as efficiently, for production equal to 3.75 normal citizen, and thus is slightly behind.

In growing cities the advantage flips to slavery because the extra food will sometimes result in an extra pop point around for a while before it gets whipped away. The advantage is smaller, though, only 0.5 pop for whipping in bunches of 2.

So in a nutshell I'd say the non-whipping approach is equal or superior in pop capped cities with adequate hills but whipping is markedly better in growing cities or cities without enough hills around.

Once a city reaches a pop limit, non-slavery gains an advantage in that the slavery city is normally running below the pop limit - an average of 1.5 if it's constantly whipping population in 2 citizen increments. In the 3-4 example, if the city were entirely focused on production, the slavery city would have an average of 2.5 citizens, working 1.5 times as efficiently, for production equal to 3.75 normal citizen, and thus is slightly behind.

EDIT: Actually, nevermind my whole previous criticism. You're looking at a very low food surplus for your "2-pop whip from 4" scenario. If a city can only put together a 2 food surplus at 2 population, I'd say it has no business using the whip.

EDIT: Actually, nevermind my whole previous criticism. You're looking at a very low food surplus for your "2-pop whip from 4" scenario. If a city can only put together a 2 food surplus at 2 population, I'd say it has no business using the whip.
Actually, if you look at my analysis, it *does* have a business using the whip, until it reaches its pop limit. The point you're making is that a city with any substantial food bonus (resources or floodplains) will almost never have enough hills for whipless to match whipping. That's true enough, but a much more complex argument - it turns on how much production you need, which is hard to define or calculate. You'd need to look at lifetime (or at least development-time) production budgets, and that will be influenced by a host of factors like tech level, military unit needs, and location-specific particular requirements (lighthouse, aqueducts, walls, etc.).

If you're going for a conquest-oriented win, you need lots of units and the need to spew military units from almost every city, including flatland cities, practically forces you to slavery (via high lifetime production requirements). I suspect this is why many think on a high difficulty slavery borders on essential, because military is key to high-difficulty wins. If you're a builder, slavery produces hammers more efficiently for a key phase (city development) and often others but avoiding slavery is more like bumping up the difficulty a bit.

Slavery is a useless civic imho I dont see the point in sacraficing half your entire population of a town in order to finish some stupid building or create some unit.

I dont see the point in sacraficing half your entire population of a town in order to finish some stupid building or create some unit.

And you call yourself a "noob". What a coincidence.

Slavery is a useless civic imho I dont see the point in sacraficing half your entire population of a town in order to finish some stupid building or create some unit.

That's how I felt. I was wrong.

well, i'm currently in a game (a real game, not a simulation!)
where i build a city on a remote spot to grab 2 seafood bonus.
It can work only 2 landtiles (the rest are pikes!).
The 2 landtiles are cottages (one grassland and 1 plain).

I only have 2 ways of building stuff there :
- specialists or
- whipping (i'm not under US yet).

It's useless to let the city grow all the way to size 20,
since all tiles available over 10 are ocean tiles.
I have built the ankor wat there
(thanks to a great engineer coming from the capital)
and can run 3 <2H/1G> priests while growing (Seafood tiles are great ;)).

But to be true, the growth was much faster thanks to slavery!
How would i have built the granary so soon without it?
How would i have built the lighthouse without it?
And the forge (yes, there is a forge :lol:)? and the 2 workboats?

I used mixed production (Engineer/priests + whip) to get the rest =
library, monastery, university, market, courthouse, Stock Exchange
sankore university (yes, a wonder, and it's warlords so no production bug for the whip),
and ...

I can tell you this city (designed as early GP Farm) runs 90% from slavery.
Of course, you could argue that i should not build hammerless cities,
but it's a shuffle map, monarch level, and i was boxed in the extreme south of the map
(tundra everywhere!), and without this city i would not have teched fast enough
+ more fogbusting to do = dead by middleage.
With it, i could whip some cats (did i mention i whipped troops there too ;) )
while my 3 other cities built some good units, and i'm now well on the way
to a domination win.
In the course of the game, i captured another high food city where i whipped a granary,
a theater, the globe theater, a library, a university, ...,
that i now keep at size 10 size, working floodplains cottages,
by drafting 1 redcoat every turn...

food for hammers rules !

(+just for bragging, being charismatic is cool!
london with 2 settled great generals + barracks + HE + WP + forge + dry dock + theocracy
churns out 1 level 5 cannon every turn :king:, without slavery)

360 Hammers and 200 cottages... Unless you were really attached to those 6 extra hammers, I think it's safe to say slavery did better.

I'm starting to very much dislike the unlimited happiness cap you're giving these cities, though. It strikes me as less realistic than the restriction on available hills. Of course you can find a happiness cap where mines outproduce slavery. It's always going to be true that slavery gets less efficient as your population gets bigger, especially if the largest food surplus the city can put together is a measly +5.

EDIT: Another thing that's bothering me. You speak of population growth as if it's impossible in the slavery case. However, who says you have to whip every 10-15 turns? The mined case took time off the mines to grow it's population. The slavery case can do the exact same thing; lay off the whip in order to grow. You can't, as a point of comparison between the two, argue that your population will grow faster with the mines than with slavery. The difference lies in how they convert food into hammers, not how they convert food into growth.

On your first point on the happiness cap, I don't think I'm being that unreasonable letting a city grow to size 10. You're going to size 8 in the slavery case.

On the second point, I'm objecting that slavery can grow or produce, not both. Non-slavery can do both at the same time. In the previous scenarios I've been struggling to match the production of the slavery, and grow at the same time, and I've usually done it at the expense of a few cottage turns. Given slavery gets less efficient with city size, eventually a non-slavery city is going to be better (no argument, it's better for small ones and low happiness caps).

If the thing that's bugging you is the (slightly) higher happiness cap in my example, for me it's the view that all hammers in the non-slavery case MUST come from hills, hence slowing the growth of the non-slavery case. Plenty of tiles produce at least two food and a hammer. Some of the animal food bonuses give a nice chunk of both surplus food and hammers. It's this view that the non-slavery case is going to hit its maximum production at such a small size.

Yes, there are going to be sites where thee aren't many hammer tiles, but equally these are better for commerce, not production cities. There, I'll take a few turns delay on completing improvements to let the city grow rather than using slavery, hence bringing more cottages into use a lot faster.

Yes, there are going to be sites where thee aren't many hammer tiles, but equally these are better for commerce, not production cities. There, I'll take a few turns delay on completing improvements to let the city grow rather than using slavery, hence bringing more cottages into use a lot faster.

well, rush the granary and you'll grow much faster , then rush the library or you'll never see it :
125% beakers on a size 3 (for a few turns) cottage spammed city is better than 100% beakers (for a lot of turns!) on a size 5 cottage spammed city, because
1) more or less the same beakers output (you'll work the more mature cottages and gain 25% beakers)
2) less maintenance (yes pop costs!)
3) more culture (+2:culture: for 40 turns make a lot of difference in land grab)

After that, you may think of a monastery or something, and decide not to rush it.
Fine.
Who said you must rush all the time? You only rush what you really need.

well, rush the granary and you'll grow much faster , then rush the library or you'll never see it :

While I agree rushing a library may be a good move, what's this "you'll never get a library if you don't rush it"? While I frequently do rush them, they aren't that slow to build conventionally.

125% beakers on a size 3 (for a few turns) cottage spammed city is better than 100% beakers (for a lot of turns!) on a size 5 cottage spammed city, because
1) more or less the same beakers output (you'll work the more mature cottages and gain 25% beakers)

Unless you've only got about three cottage tiles (and the slavery city uses them rather than the highest food tiles when it's growing back, which is a mistake), this isn't the case. Being extremely generous the slavery case might have 3 hamlets to work whereas the non-slavery can bring in two more cottages, but 125% of 6 is still only 7, not 8. The point with whipping a library is that once the city grows back and catches up (or close to) the non-slavery city it'll have more beakers, not that it'll still have better beakers immediately after whipping.

2) less maintenance (yes pop costs!)

Very small saving here. Population is only one component of maintenance costs, and with early empires it's minor compared to the number of city costs. It's comparable to the tiny gain in commerce from the trade routes of the larger non-slavery cities.

3) more culture (+2 for 40 turns make a lot of difference in land grab)

In the case of the library, quite true. For most improvements though this isn't an issue, whether because they don't produce culture, or the radius has expanded by the time I get to them, and is one of the reasons I favour whipping the library more than most.

I agree that the library is a good one to whip (though the first reason you give in support of this is wrong). In a cottage spam city though, I don't mind waiting a few turns for an improvement to get more use out of the cottages.

Who said you must rush all the time? You only rush what you really need.

Which is exactly the point I've been making. My objection has been the idea cropping up on a number of other threads that slavery is always a better source of production for everything, regardless of terrain or city size. I'm certainly not denying slavery may be better some of the time, but it's the "there's always no question you should use it" and the "high hammer tiles are useless" lines which have been becoming more prevalent that I'm arguing against.

While I agree rushing a library may be a good move, what's this "you'll never get a library if you don't rush it"? While I frequently do rush them, they aren't that slow to build conventionally.
<SNIP>
I agree that the library is a good one to whip (though the first reason you give in support of this is wrong). In a cottage spam city though, I don't mind waiting a few turns for an improvement to get more use out of the cottages.

ok, let's say that you have 1/2/3 or even 4 beakers less for the 1, 2 or 3 turns you need to grow back from size 3 to size 4.
that makes in the worst situation (!) a difference of 12 beakers in favor of the biggest pop. Then you are even for a few more turns, then you have 25% more beakers for 30 turns. Since you argue that the cottages are already well developped (which i think is obviously wrong), that means than you could churn out 5*4 * 0,25= 5 more beakers for 30 turns = 150 beakers. Slavery wins!

I'm not a fanatical slaver, but you must acknowledge one thing : there is no other way to efficiently bring some hammerless cities to very valuable cities.
I know no other way to stay under happiness cap with benefits.
I know no other way to stock hammers. You're near a military tech discovery?
Grow your pop everywhere (even beyond happiness cap), start building the unit that will be obsoleted by the next one, and in the same turn that you discover the tech you build a horde of those units!
Storing hammers in population points is a unique way to put your hammers where you need them! And only slavery (until US do it even better in the end game) can give you this.

I agree with the entire contents of the above post, (and I basically said the same about the libraries in my previous post). However it's not really addressed at the point I've been arguing. I'm arguing against those who claim slavery is always better than conventional production; that hammer producing tiles are near useless. I'm not arguing that slavery is never useful, and there are many incidences where it is. As I've said at least three times already, it's the "you should only use slavery" mentality I'm arguing against.

We both seem to be in agreement, with your arguments directed at a point I've never made.

We both seem to be in agreement, with your arguments directed at a point I've never made.

what do you think of seeing pop as "stored hammers"?;)

It's an interesting viewpoint that seems sound if a few conditions are allowed for. You do need to bear in mind that the efficiency of this storage diminishes as population increases, as each additional population costs more food, but gives the same hammer output. You also need to remember that a pop may generate a steady steam of hammers anyway, and particularly at large populations, and later in the game, liquidising the population into hammers may produce less than if they had continued to produce normally.

Broadly speaking though it seems a reasonable viewpoint. You just have to remember that isn't the only use of population.

what do you think of seeing pop as "stored hammers"?;)
Yes, that is certainly one way I see the pop of my cities as far as production potential is concerned. Furthermore, I see the food production in the city as a source of hammers just as important as any mines. But the pop are also valuable as workers of tiles or as specialists and when deciding whether to :whipped: or not that is also an important concern. Getting that balance right (using pop as hammers or as workers) is part of the art of the whip and it varies according to the city, the tactical circumstance, the way the city is best developed or how it is to be used and other things.

And you call yourself a "noob". What a coincidence.um...what?

um...what?

You posted recently that you're a "noob" with little knowledge of the game. That makes it not so surprising that you don't see the point of Slavery. But it makes it a bit more surprising that you feel qualified to offer an opinion about the value of Slavery.

You posted recently that you're a "noob" with little knowledge of the game. That makes it not so surprising that you don't see the point of Slavery. But it makes it a bit more surprising that you feel qualified to offer an opinion about the value of Slavery.I don't recall....link?

I don't recall....link?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4475970&postcount=1

Hard to believe that you can't recall whether you just started playing the game recently, or not.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4475970&postcount=1

Hard to believe that you can't recall whether you just started playing the game recently, or not.
Recently? It's over 10 days old. Not to mention civ IV, that doesnt mean i havent played the other civs. You failed at trying to look intelligent.

EDIT and when I say civs I mean the other civilization games, just so you dont embarrass yourself.

Forgive me. I should have realized that in 10 days you've gone from noob to uber-genius. Now you know everything about the game, and can lecture in detail to people who've been playing and studying it for a year.

Forgive me. I should have realized that in 10 days you've gone from noob to uber-genius. Now you know everything about the game, and can lecture in detail to people who've been playing and studying it for a year.The game hasn't even been out for a year...

What I do is to whip non stop until the unhappiness penalties max out and I am forced to stop. Then I start again as soon as I can.

This way, I maintain about 2-3 population per city for at least half the game. I also LOSE A LOT.

Coincidence? Am I doing this wrong? What are the proper whipping increments? Just once per unhappiness penalty? Don't let them stack up? What if you've got hereditary rule and a large happiness allowance to spend down? Somebody help me.

What I do is to whip non stop until the unhappiness penalties max out and I am forced to stop. Then I start again as soon as I can.

This way, I maintain about 2-3 population per city for at least half the game. I also LOSE A LOT.

Coincidence? Am I doing this wrong? What are the proper whipping increments? Just once per unhappiness penalty? Don't let them stack up? What if you've got hereditary rule and a large happiness allowance to spend down? Somebody help me.

You are keeping your population far too low. If you are whipping intelligently than you are getting tons of production, so not working tiles for hammers isn't your main problem, but you are getting virtually no commerce compared to your rivals whose much bigger cities are working far more tiles with rivers, resources and towns. Therefore they are outstripping you in science. You can use slavery to augment production (traditional rushing for large, time sensitive projects) or you can use it more liberally as a significant part of your production base, but you seem to be whipping for the sake of whipping, which is what keeps your reign nasty brutish and short.


Other answer: Whip lots of pop at a time. You get 1 unhappiness for whipping 3 pop to complete a just started project (obviously don't whip the turn you put it in the queue if you can help it, rushing an unstarted project costs double), and 3 unhappiness for whipping 1 pop three times to finish three almost complete projects. Hereditary rule is an excellent civic and helps control unhappiness from whipping or any other cause but that doesn't keep your population from falling too low.

My computer's been dead for two weeks, now, thanks to a defective power supply; in the meantime, I'm getting my fix by reading the forums. I'm learning quite a bit (in theory) and quite eager to put it all to use, but I've got some questions, especially concerning slavery use. Prior to reading the threads, I'd never used slavery, partially due to personal repugnance, and partially due to ignorance -- I'd never used it before in the game, though I've been playing -- had been playing -- for a month.

I'm not a micromanager unless I have to be, but it sounds like going into the city screens to manage each square, square by square, to maximize slavery is a bit tedious. Are y'all (yes, I'm a Texan) using the city auto-managers? And if so, what settings are you using to manage your cities to maximize slavery?

Based off of what I've read so far, I'd guess that (for a small city on resource-poor terrain) the initial settings for the city manager would be to emphasize food resources ( :food: ) and commerce ( :commerce: ). Once a city is 'whipped' to hurry a granary or the like, the city manager would be changed strictly to growth ( :food: )... Just guessing, here, but I'd appreciate some infor.

I get my power supply in tomorrow! Woohoo! Maybe then I can start playing Civ IV's Warlords again, instead of writing long and windy posts that harass your attention spans.
-Joe

My computer's been dead for two weeks, now, thanks to a defective power supply; in the meantime, I'm getting my fix by reading the forums. I'm learning quite a bit (in theory) and quite eager to put it all to use, but I've got some questions, especially concerning slavery use. Prior to reading the threads, I'd never used slavery, partially due to personal repugnance, and partially due to ignorance -- I'd never used it before in the game, though I've been playing -- had been playing -- for a month.

I'm not a micromanager unless I have to be, but it sounds like going into the city screens to manage each square, square by square, to maximize slavery is a bit tedious. Are y'all (yes, I'm a Texan) using the city auto-managers? And if so, what settings are you using to manage your cities to maximize slavery?

Based off of what I've read so far, I'd guess that (for a small city on resource-poor terrain) the initial settings for the city manager would be to emphasize food resources ( :food: ) and commerce ( :commerce: ). Once a city is 'whipped' to hurry a granary or the like, the city manager would be changed strictly to growth ( :food: )... Just guessing, here, but I'd appreciate some infor.

I get my power supply in tomorrow! Woohoo! Maybe then I can start playing Civ IV's Warlords again, instead of writing long and windy posts that harass your attention spans.
-Joe

Usually after whipping you'd want to restore your city to its happiness cap (now one lower due to whipping) as quickly as possible, so yes emphasize food. And you should have a granery. If you plan on whipping again right away you'll need to regrow pop quickly for that too.