I know that it is best not to slave much if you are at high population or slow growth rate... but when do you decide to stop slaving so it can grow to the higher population?

Of course, it is smart to slave non-improved tiles and unhappy citizens.

Butif you have moderate production, should you still slave some buildings at high population?

For example... a size 8 city... 6 food surplus, 10 production... so 12 turns slow build for forge.

Perhaps the best rule of thumb is slave population as long as it takes less than a certain amount of time to grow back? 5-6 turns to grow, at a higher population?

So a size 12 city, which only took 5 turns to go from 11-12, would be worth slaving 2 pop for a forge.




Any thoughts?

My rule of thumb is: if it takes as many peeps as it would turns to just build it, I don't whip. And I pretty much NEVER whip something that hasn't had at least 1 turn of production. And I pretty much NEVER whip units (maybe a Settler or something desperately needed), but many people do and the AI sure does.

As long as you have small cities that need things built, you have a need for Slavery. At some point, you may decide to use something better, but if you've got Cristo or you're Spiritual, you'll want to go back now and then to take care of new cities or captured cities with lots of revolters sitting idle. It's also a good way to manage War Weariness.

If you have :) enough to grow, grow. If you don't, whip. That's my rule of thumb, except if the city is near the food cap.

I usually judge it by tiles being worked. Early in the game, with so few Workers and Worker turns therefore being precious, I'll have may unimproved tiles. Often in the early game they're unimproved because I don't yet have the technologies required to improve them (no Civil Service for chain irrigation, no Machinery for windmills, workshop yield is too low before Guilds...). I don't want to whip citizens who are working improved, high-yield tiles if possible, or off of cottages even if they're low-yielding (the little suckers need to be worked to grow, after all). But I'll not hesitate to whip away a couple of citizens who have no tile better to work than a forested plains or grassland tile.

Depends on either of the following:
- The city has lots of high food tiles and can easily regrow sizes, so cutting like five or six turns off a building or unit makes sense
- The city's maximum production is so slow (i.e. all grassplains for cottage spam) that I'd rather whip it a little than wait 30 or more turns for my courthouse or library.

Other than that I tend to slow down once the city gets enough production to support itself, though when happiness isn't an issue high-food cities can get whipped regularally even at around size 12.

And this of course bars emergency forces, which may be whipped regardless of how it hurts the city.


By the time emancipation runs around though my whipping has pretty much run its course.

whip'em hell :p

that's why I love spiritual; you can go slavery fast even post emancipation to whip the conquered cities. A good dose to remind them who's the boss around :p

that being said - in commerce cities only whipping granary and monastery/temple of the ap religion(most of the games I manage to fetch it one way or another)

production cities - low food, high hammer, no whip

globe and high food/specialists cities - whip them all the time.

when attacking - everyone is whipped.

My only problem with constantly whipping commerce cities is that dead citizens don't work cottages...

You have to ask more specific questions than that i bet if you want the answer you are looking for. What are you looking to produce and for when? If you need an army very fast you are probably better off whipping, if you are just at the start of building an army you might be better off just growing onto more titles and then use the titles to produce the army, is it a commerce city? Most of the time it is probably better to grow onto more cottages than to whip improvements, but you'll probably need advanced calculations for that... I assume you already got HR so happiness isn't a problem, then it will also depend somewhat on your health cap. Also a question if you want to grow and build units to make your cities happy or to stay small and whip buildings instead for example... A new pop is eventually equal to 5-9 commerce depending on the title(assuming a cottage), is your library / bank / whatever going to be producing more than that? By whipping you get the building X turns earlier which gives some benefit. You also lose Y cottage turns. Are those cottage turns going to give more output(assuming maxing out at 5-9 commerce depening on the title, civics, traits etc.).

With your above example i am pretty sure you get worse result by whipping, as long as you can grow onto farms / workshops / mines / windmills at least...

I whip until all infra are in place (max whip size is 8 for me)

then i let the city grow to its max and work its farms.

once the city reach size 12 I replace farms with cottages if running a CE.

Whipping i think is situaltional, sometimes it makes sense other times it;s just a waste. i would agree that couthouse and markets in commece/grassland citys benefit from the whip.

The big question for me is what quality tiles are being worked?

I'll usually want to work special resources and I will not whip more than a granary and possibly a culture building early in the game if I have a bunch of tiles that I want to work without a bunch of food to help the population zoom up.

If I have a bunch of food and I don't have a bunch of other tiles that I'm especially keen to work, then I'll whip heavily, taking out multiple population whenever possible.

If there is a mix, then I look at my strategic situation. How badly do I need that unit/building. Am I trying to spam enough missionaries to get a neighbor to flip religions? Am I getting ready for Ragnar to come pounding on my front door? Am I in the process of building my infrastructure so that I can pull ahead in important techs with the land I currently have?

All of those questions are situational, but I find that I tend to stay in Slavery for most of the early game unless I have a particular reason to switch out and I do tend to keep my population down to the point where I am only working "quality" tiles. Mined hills, farms, cottages and special resources. If I'm working a plains forest, then either I need the production and I'm probably better off whipping anyway or I'm just waiting patiently for enough hammers to whip at my current population.

I'd rather even let my food bar shrink for some turns with a specialist or two than stagnate or grow at an insignificant rate on garbage tiles like unimproved plains or plains forests.

If you are looking for a rule of thumb with some mathematical justification... consider how much food it takes to grow back from a whip F, your current surplus food f, and how much production, n, you would gain if you didn't whip and grew to your max size.

If n*F/f is greater than the hammers you get from the whip, you are better off growing.

When you whip you lose population and your citizen configuration will change. We have new values f' and n' at the lower pop.

If n'*F/f' is less than the whip hammers, you are better off whipping.

Between these two bounds the two options are close, but if you get how I came up with this it's not too hard to figure out which is best. And yes there is a lot of strategic considerations I'm overlooking for the sake of presenting a useful rule of thumb, most tend to favor whipping.

You're supposed to stop whipping??

Whipping is often great till the bitter end, esp w/ Christo Redentor.

My only problem with constantly whipping commerce cities is that dead citizens don't work cottages...

That is the big issue with commerce cities , right? :p

But in fact it is quite the oposite: in most ocasions whipping a building ( especially the ones that help with € or $ generation ) allows you to work cottages for more turns than trying to build them by scratch using non-cottage tiles as hammer providers, especially in the early game where cottages are still in very poor shape.

But OFC that whipping a 18 pop city with mature grassland cottages is a stupid thing to do ;)

I pretty much never abandon it. I tend to pack cities very tightly and abuse the hell out of per-city-bonuses, leaving me with a lot of infrastructure to be built and with small cities where the whip is at its best.

Later in the game some of these cities will claim most of the land and grow to a respectable size, the others will support a few specialists (mostly from food corporations)with Sushi and be whipped/drafted to hell and back.

If you whip a building in your commerce city and the science+gold output goes down (due to dead cottages), it was a mistake.

Depends of how much it goes down and for how long, and also of the future revenues .

Another question i have been wondering about when is it better to work grassland cottages vs mines? what about mining vs cottaging? are there any good answers for this? Say a size 15 city working 2 resources rest cottages(in various state of growth) and mines?

If food surplus > happiness surplus, it's ok to work mines.

what if you are already working 12 cottages? what if you are close to health cap? Pretty sure there are times you want mines rather than cottaging over the mines at least...

It depends on what you're trying to achieve.

Sure, I could work a mine an create military units in my cottage town, but I would rather make a science or merchant specialist (unless of course there is some infrastructure that needs building, and then we get to the whole cost of opportunity issue again).

I assume you haven't built all multipliers yet...

I am happy to whip temples, colloseum or anything that will add a happiness bonus to a fast growing city.

Alternative is whipping where production will take far too long anyway.

I guess later on the question is draft or whip? :)

Fishing villages get whipped every 10 turns. Only way to build infrastructure. Other cities, not so much. Never whip wonders! It's a waste.

Fishing villages get whipped every 10 turns. Only way to build infrastructure. Other cities, not so much. Never whip wonders! It's a waste.

Whipping a wonder is worthwhile if you're really close and want to make absolutely sure that you get the wonder. Whipping units and buildings and letting the rollover hammers flow into the wonder is good, but if you are just looking to get that wonder into production as quick as possible, then whipping the wonder as your last production boost can often be more effective than just letting the hammers from overflow do your work.

I'm thinking in particular of a case where you might grow to population six and can whip 3 population to finish the wonder vs. whipping 1 population at a time for military units (because you already whipped all the buildings that you can currently build). This is most likely to happen in a lot-o-fish island/peninsula that is trying to build the Maeiou(y) statues.