Hey y'all. I've found lots of comprehensive guides to Cottage Economy, the flavors of Specialist Economy and Espionage Economy but not as much on Hammer Economy. I think I have a decent idea of the mature Hammer Economy:

civics: State Property, Caste System, for synergy with:
land improvements: watermills & workshops
(aside from specific specialty cities) crucial city improvements are Forge, Factory, power plants and Industrial Parks to intensify:
:gold: and :science: is produced by cities building it directly
by virtue of beaucoup honest to goodness, unrushed :hammers:, HE outperforms other econ frameworks in Space Races... but, also rocks for warmongering.


If you disagree with these assumptions please let me know. If they jive with your understanding, great, but I have more questions.

What is/are the optimal path(s) for a civ reach to reach the point to run a viable HE? Is there a good lead-up unique to a HE which sets it up, or should I use an existing framework? The idea of bulldozing towns to make room for workshops hurts my inner child. Switch from a well functioning economy base to another is a tough pill to swallow.
although :commerce: yields are secondary to :hammers:, there will be some. What are uses for the slider? A couple of things come to mind: :culture: for to offset the :mad: caused by running Caste System while other civs run Emancipation or :espionage:, because cities can't build it directly.
what are some good National Wonder tactics to support an HE? Oxford, Wall Street, West Point and Hero Epic are what they are, but what about the others? Does the Globe Threatre - pop rush/draft machine still make sense? What about National Park: merge with the :gold:, :science: or :espionage: main producer?


The first question is really the kicker. I've searched and found comparisons between HE and the other economics basis, but nothing on how get one started. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Guide to hammer economy: Kill everyone before they research Feudalism.

Don't be an economist! Support diversity of economic options within your empire!

:lol: I was hoping to diversify a bit myself and play something other than Rome on Pangaea.

Not a tutorial, but a group of good players ( including obsolete, Snaaty and Dirk1302 ) is running a SG test game on that (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=312546) ....

But I have to agree with Dave in this: there is no need to treat every city the same way.

The problem with using hammers as a basis for research is that early in the game, you at first can't (you can't build wealth or research), and to make some cities into hammer cities you need workshops which suck hard before caste/guilds.

Optimal techs? MC, Code of Laws, Guilds, Chemistry, and State Property...things that make workshops and watermills better. Getting there? You should probably use some form of cottages/specialists. There IS no "early game" hammer economy, unless you just have hills everywhere with the right amount of food to work them, or unless you mean just building units to kill everything.

It is very fast to switch INTO hammers from anything else, so getting the key techs using some other means is where it's at.

Yes, I disagree. The hammers are a crutch or a supplement, they are not going to be the primary method of creating wealth or beakers. They are there to be used situationally to help you reach a short term goal faster.

Yes, I disagree. The hammers are a crutch or a supplement, they are not going to be the primary method of creating wealth or beakers. They are there to be used situationally to help you reach a short term goal faster.

Now THIS is a little extreme though. They can easily take over as the primary source of everything from the mid game on. I did it on emperor in the LHC game to win easily, and Unconquered Sun did it MUCH more impressively in BOTM 10. Once you get the multipliers and stronger workshops, it's plenty viable and you can set it up quickly. You just don't start off using primarily hammers right away...

I tryed this in one game playing as Cyrus. I was trying to see if through a hammer econ you could maintin unlimited non-stop expantion. Rocking a pure hammer econ is interesting but does pose some challanges.

For tech path alphabit/currancy/Col are important. Then go for the workshop techs.
Build farms/hammer buildings.

There are two problems with the Hamemr economy. First you cant build buildings/units when building research. This can be countered somewhat because your production is so high you can get things built super fast alowing you to switch back to research.

Second the HE can't compete on equal terms past liberalism, but does have and advantage in the early game (before CS). For this type of econ to work you need to use all thouse extra hammers in massive military expantion.

THE BIG ADVANTAGE.

You can expand non-stop, you can't crash the economy. You're goal is to have 2-3 times as much land as the AI by the time you reach liberalism. Your econ and production will out-pace the AI by alot in the classical age. You need to use that time to dominate.
Also your production chart will be mind-blowing. like 3-5 times that of the AI.

This would work best with civs that have crazy powerful early UU's. Persia in my case. Mongols/Rome/Egypt would also work great.

Guide to hammer economy: Kill everyone before they research Feudalism.

Don't be an economist! Support diversity of economic options within your empire!

I thought that was Dagger Economy.

Also, "Land is Power" and Cottages are the worst improvement you can put on a tile, but they have a curious relationship to Towns which are the best improvement you can put on a tile.

THE BIG ADVANTAGE.

You can expand non-stop, you can't crash the economy.

Why is that? If crashing the economy is possible playing with CE or SE, it certainly should be with HE too. Mines or workshops aren't superior for producing beakers or wealth compared to cottages or specialists. (btw. what does "crashing the economy" exactly mean in CIV??)

What is/are the optimal path(s) for a civ reach to reach the point to run a viable HE? Is there a good lead-up unique to a HE which sets it up, or should I use an existing framework? The idea of bulldozing towns to make room for workshops hurts my inner child. Switch from a well functioning economy base to another is a tough pill to swallow.

Tech path could be to beeline Guilds, Chemistry, and Steel and then backfill Communism and Assembly Line. In this case, you might have a tight race to Liberalism. Another option is to go through the Education-Gunpowder path to Chemistry, looking for the AI to research Engineering and Feudalism-Guilds for you. This way you'll have an easier time getting the most for Liberalism (possibly Communism, Steam Power, or Assembly Line).

And no, you shouldn't bulldoze towns to build workshops or watermills with the intention of getting more beakers/gold. Workshops can only add 4 hammers, which can get a 100% bonus with forge, factory, and plant; towns can add 7 commerce (8 with Financial), which can get a 125% bonus with library, university, observatory, and academy. However, if you're building or capturing new cities (with few cottages) around the time where you're getting the HE techs, building workshops/watermills is going to pay off faster than cottages. Some AI love to spam farms, so if you're conquering these AI in the midgame, consider turning these conquests into hammer cities. In that same vein, if you have some specialist cities that are really starting to peter out because of the increasing cost of GPs, consider turning them into hammer cities. A hybrid hammer-cottage economy can be very strong because the hammer cities can build enough wealth to allow you to run 100% research, thus allowing your cottage cities with high beaker multipliers to maximize their performance.

although :commerce: yields are secondary to :hammers:, there will be some. What are uses for the slider? A couple of things come to mind: :culture: for to offset the :mad: caused by running Caste System while other civs run Emancipation or :espionage:, because cities can't build it directly.

As I said above, the best hammer economy is going to still be running 100% research. If you have a decent amount of cottage commerce, spending it on the culture slider is a waste. If you have more use for Slavery or CS than Emancipation, you can keep the AI out of Emancipation through bribery and spy missions, and by telling any vassals not to research Democracy.

A direct quote from Unconquered Sun, Deity Player, and one of the best players on the Forum.

So CE plus: 1 leader trait, 1 wonder, 1 UB, and some Corps has a comparable hammer output to workshops. Good to know I guess.

I don't agree with most of what your saying Yeosol. A HE doesn't start competing until after Liberalism, once modifiers like factories, coal plants, etc start adding up. You get huge versatility with a fully functional HE as well because they can produce infrastructure at scary speeds. This means you could have 100% of your ciites have all science and wealth modifiers in place very fast and cycle between units, wealth, and research. Or you could specialize more and have 50% produce units and 50% build all every modifier and cycle. Or specialize 25% to only wealth 100% of the time and 25% 100% of science. Etc, Etc, Etc.

The other great thing is you have the potential to produce 2 Infantry in 3 turns from every city. If you have 20 cities at 1600-1750 AD that is 80 Infantry in 6 turns! Towns + Rush Buy cannot compete with this. Yes - Bulldoze the towns

A HE doesn't have an advantage in the REXing because when you REX you aren't running any kind of economy yet but are simply working luxury, food, and hammer resources. From that point you either run a SE/FE > HE once you have the ability to run enough food and get the necessary hammers from workshops or run a CE and Workshop over them. I think a SE/FE works better early because it puts more emphasis on farms and biology, both of which will transition nicely to a HE. Besides, with all the health hits in a HE you will need to tech medicine.

Just my thoughts.

Well you can still crash it but it's much harder. Crashing means when your science rate hits near 0 in effect stoping your research. The reason I say you cant crash is because production is much much quicker to improve then comerce/specialists. Specialits need buildings (lib) unless you have cast system. Cottages take time to mature. I play on epic in which it takes 105 (I think) turns to reach town from cottage. So that's 4C from Town after 105 turns. It takes 6 turns to build a mine on a plains hill giving you 4H which can be converted to 4 research.

So why I say you can't crash it is because as long as the city has a bonus food resource you should be able to grow and build production quick enough to maintian your rate. A 3 pop city with 1 food resource and 2 mines (grass) produces 7 beakers + 3-5 gold depending on trade routes.
A 3 pop with 1 food and 2 cottages only produces 2 extra commmerce ( + the 3-5 gold). That commerce is also factored though the research rate % where as the production beakers are not.

Essentialy production is much much faster to develop so you wont crash. The downside as stated early is that a cottage eventualy will get up to 7C which is much better then a mine/workshop/etc.

ShannonCT - You're right. You should keep the cottages you capture. You will eventualy want to transistion to a hammer-cottage econ.

Crusher1 - You're right in that you will need to rotate what your citys are building. I also agree that a HE gets some good bonuses late game with factorys/power/leveys/etc. However My consern is that there is a gap between CE getting liberalism and HE getting industrialization. A decent sized gap. I forsee problems with keeping up durring that time to get you through to factorys.
As far as the early power, this post explains more of what I mean. It's the speed of production tile development compared to cottages that gives the early advantage.

A Hammer- Specialist hybrid might work well though.

Why is that? If crashing the economy is possible playing with CE or SE, it certainly should be with HE too. Mines or workshops aren't superior for producing beakers or wealth compared to cottages or specialists. (btw. what does "crashing the economy" exactly mean in CIV??)

Woodreaux's Civ IV Economy Dictionary (v0.1.0)
Economy Crash - Recession: upkeep and maintenance forces you to run so many merchants (instead of scientists) or keep the slider so low on science that you get left behind in the tech race.
Economy Crash - Depression: upkeep and maintenance is so bad, you have a :gold: deficit at 0% science, and you're loosing units to strikes.

Hi

Anyone who ever seen my games might notice I LOVE hammers :). I do my best to get as many high hammer cities as I can. But I do tend to do it differently than others do when they focus on hammers.

One for me the point of hammers is to build more stuff faster. And by stuff I mean buildings and units. So if I HAVE to I will build wealth or reaserch if it ONLY to avoid strikes and losing units but I dont if I can help it and if I cant I look at it as emergency stop gap until I can fix it asap so I wont have to do that anymore. I want ALL my hammers going into building stuff.

Because of that my thinking is more quantity than quality. Yeah one super beaker city pumping 200 beakers is nice even if it does take 30 turns to build a mace or a cat. And it helps support those cpl of supper military pump cities that just have a barracks and pumping out units in like 5 turns but not making any beakers. But to me 10-12 cities all doing like 15-25 beakers and all able to pump out a mace or cat in 10 turns or less is better :)

But to get that it means violating that old rule of :NEVER build EVERY building in EVERY city". To me whole point of maxing a cities hammers is to build MORE stuff so maybe not EVERY building in EVERY city but if things go well for me it gonna be MOST cities have every building and EVERY city have most buildings.

Again it that whole quantity thing if you have LOTS of cities and every city have a market and courthouse then most every city while not making a TON of gold at LEAST paying for it self and that does add up the more cities you get. Every lil bit helps and it can add up. Walls in a city can make that city harder to take and a tiny power boost. But hammers to build walls in EVERY city mean whole empire now hard to take and can have a noticible impact on pwoer rating. Same deal with castles--one castle one xtra trade route in city -- big whoop-- but 15 castles and now that can be at least being able to move your slider a notch or two or afford to take/settle more cites. especially if those cities all had hammers to build em pretty fast and then you alternated with some building castles while others build units then switching it got done fast without slowing down military build up.

Because of that I avoid caste system. Two reasons. One is that if very city making enough hammers to build a libray reasonably quickly then you can have every city running 1-2 scientists which is just as spiffy as that one supper city running 5 or 6.

Other reason is that slavery is just to handy. Remember thinking behind hammer philosphy is more stuff FASTER and nothing gets stuff faster early on than whipping it. And in order to work all those mines you DO need LOTS of food so for a same reason a city is equipped to work a lot of mines that city also equipped to recover from a whip and using the hammers plus whipping now and then can be very strong I think.

Now not EVERY city gonna be equal in hammers and food etc. So while it nice if MOST cities get every building they wont all get em at same time. You do have to put a lil planning in it. Like say you BEST hammer city just builds units while other cities build their libraries and then once 2 or 3 get dene then THEY build units while best city builds its library and then it can go back to building units while other cities build markets and so on.

I also avoid workshops. To me only thing more important than high hammer tile is high food tile that let me work that hammer tile and since workshops in most cases LOWER food I avoid em even more than cottages and I HATE cottages :P.

I mean I will use a workshop or two if I have NO choice but I would rather work an unimporved plains forrest than a palins workshop and if it a grassland forrest most likely forrest gets chopped then farmed or cottaged before I would put workshop there.

Also lots of food can give more flexability. Say if you have enough farms to work 4 mines and used those hammers to build a market and library then you have enough food to take one citizen off a mine and be a scientist or merchant as needed and still have enough hammers to keep on building stuff. And yeah one or two scientists in a city no biggie but one or two in EVERY city add up--again it quantity not quality hehe.

Nice wonders to have I think are 'mids--hammer outlook not a true all out SE but it does take advantage of running one or two specialists per city as needed and boost from running rep can be a big help and higher happy cap mean more citizens to work those mines even if you need to have a specialt or two.

GLH is nice too. SInce goal is lots of cities if you build lots of em on the coast then extra trade routes add up. In fact if you build glh then use hammers to get lots cities on coasts ALL have castles and harbors and courthouses and markets then economy should be doing so good you gonna want to AVOID economics just so you dont lose those castles hehe. You can tech something else and get to it faster than if you went econ/corp first OR your econmy can be strong enough that you can afford to tech through econ/corp faster than you might have--making use of hammers to make all those buildings in all those cities give nice flexability. :)

Other wonders that are handy are Uni of Sankore, and Spiral minerette--cuz they add tiny boost to religious buildings and since with hammer cities MOST cities can build all those building fast all those lil boosts can add up big time.It things like that that to me make hammers powerful --they let you build LOTS of stuff all giving a lil boost that adds up and STILL lets you keep pumping military.

Statue of Liberty can be nice since it let you have free specialist per city that can be whatever is needed and let citizen that would have been used for that slot to either stay a specialist or go back to work for more hammers--either way you get nice boost without losing hammers or boost in hammers without losing specialist--whichever you think is needed at time.

Key early techs I think are just the usual--CoL--for courthouses so you can run more cities. Writing for libraries, sailing for better/easier trade with all those cities, currency for markets and routes. MC for forges.

Also IW, BW not JUST for offense but also cuz you CANT work copper or iron until you can see where it is :P --same deal why hunting, masonry, AH should be used if horseys. ellies, or stone/marble nearby--always go for chance to get hammers. AG/fishing handy just cuz they get you the food to work those hammers :).

For that same reason CS should be priorty not only can buracracy be handy boost to your cap--but it also let you build more farms and let you have more options to build cities near more hills and still work em all :).

CS also nice cuz another tech you want to go for asap is machinery to get watermills which I like MUCH better than workshops but also getting those two techs also mean maces and crossbows so not only do your hammers get boosted but so do your military.

Banking also handy--it gives a building that if you spamming empire wide--which again you CAN if you make sure your cities have the hammers for it--will add to to the quantity each city is making but it open up merc which can be nice for same reason SoL helps.

Now since I make very few if any workshops SP not as appealing for me as Mining INC. Not only can it be HUGE hammer boost to existing cities but it gets new cities up and running faster plus it lest any junk cities like one tile island cities or all tundra ice cities settled just to get squirrels or some resource suddenly able to build stuff so they can start adding to the quantity--something SP wont help with.

Also going for techs needed for Mining INC seems quicker than techs needed for SP but also those techs all help more I think--RR help hammers plus give you nice defense unit. It aslo down part of tree you want for AL and steam power and rifling and combustion and steel--ALL which either help hammers and/or open up powerful units you can put all those hammers into.

Big downside is of course you CANT count on GE EVERY game but in MOST games I usually get a GE some point before RR and corp and even if you dont get engineer for mining inc--going down tech path that gives you lumber mills, RR, factrories, levies, Ironworks AND cannon, riflemen, machineguns, destroyers and infantry still handy way to go even if you never get mining up and running.

Also spamming a corp in big empire can get VERY expensive with merc but a big empire in FM plus corp spam can more than make up losing freebie specialits in cases like that.

Now all this like ANY economy or strategy is nice in theory but ALWAYS be willing to play what map gives you. I mean I HATE cottages but if I see a locations with like 7 or 8 floodplains guess what getting spammed in that city? :P Or if I see a location that have like 3 corn or something in its bfc that city probably gonna be running LOTS of specialists, and especially in my cap early on if I am expanding fast more cottages may be built to help pay for em especially on tiles I couldnt irrgate anyways. But more often than not unless that location IDEAL for some kind of specialist farm or cottage city I am gonna try max the mines/lumbermills/farms. That one advantage I think hammer focus can have--without SOME kind of special resources in bfc it can be hard to get a halfway decent cottage or specialist focused city going but even if ALL you have is just regular old vanillia hills and grassland tiles you can irrigate you can STILL get a nice hammer city going.

And unlike cottages or windmills or workshops or plantations or any other improvement those mines have a chance to pop their own special resources if you get lucky :).

Im not saying how I play is ideal and I am still mainly noble level playing moving up to prince but this way works best for how I play.So getting as many hammers as I can then working from there seems to work best for me.

And I will also say this. I have won LOTS of games where I have NEVER built one single cottage--but NEVER had a game where I didnt build a mine hehe :P

Kaytie

@ Kat

Slavery is very nice as you're transitioning to your HE and when your HE is in an infant phase needing to get in key infrastructure. Once you have the hammers though I prefer to stay in Caste to get the +1 for workshops.

Yeosol -

It's not difficult at all. Whether your in a SE/FE or CE as you're transitioning to the HE and in route to Liberalism bulb your way into Chemistry with a few GS from your GP Farm and boom +4 work shops. The problem in a HE is always Health, but it's not the end of the world.

Regardless what civics you end up choosing by Mid Industrial Age a HE has the potential to be pulling in 3000+ Beakers per turn (when research is emphasized). The nice thing about a HE is like I said before, you can literally build 80 Infantry in 6 turns. The point is, skipping on research for 6 turns is not a big deal when your can produce an army so effortlessly. By the Modern age a HE can pull in some truly sick numbers. Can a CE pull in the same beakers? I'm sure they can - but they can't keep up with a HE in production. Rush buy isn't coming close here, even with the Kremlin.

@ Kat
Can a CE pull in the same beakers? I'm sure they can - but they can't keep up with a HE in production. Rush buy isn't coming close here, even with the Kremlin.

Are you sure? AFAIK rush-buying costs 3 :gold: for one :hammers:. Kremlin reduces this cost for 33%, so it's 2 to 1. Wealth and hammer multipliers are equally strong. Therefore a town with 7-9 gold yields is about as strong as a workshop with all bonuses (4 :hammers:) when producing units. When producing wealth or science, it's twice as strong.

I think I get the picture, start off running a solid civilization, and once a sufficient amount of the requisite techs are in place, start making the transition.

I appreciate everyone's input.
:thanx:

Please keep it coming. Not that I'm a troll, but I like seeing arguments and disagreements about these economies. The epic CE vs SE holy wars have brought out incredible volumes of data about land use and civic synergies. If any of y'all believe HE's are sub-optimal, please do tell.

One bit I want to add. I read that SE's can be categorized according to attributes like hard or soft to reflect :food: going heavily towards specialists' OM NOM NOM, while a soft SE, otherwise know as SE/FE, is the use of a lower number specialists and a significant amount of :food: used for the whip. Old news, y'all know that. In the parlance of the civ-fanatics, is there a distinction between :hammers: -> :gold:, :science: such that:

you're running State Property and Caste System to maximize the workshops and watermills, which cover the country side...

as opposed to:

you're not necessarily running the a fore mentioned civics and rather than workshops and watermills everywhere, there are lumber-milled forests?

I have a feeling someone is going to say, yeah the first one is a HE, and the second one is a suboptimal arrangement or a hybrid. Or maybe not. Anybody? Bueller?

Not that I'm a troll, but I like seeing arguments and disagreements about these economies. The epic CE vs SE holy wars have brought out confused incredible volumes of data newbies about land use and civic synergies.

Fixed. http://www.civfanatics.com/images/blank.gif

I wish Unconquered Sun would post his expertise about HE here ^^.

What I do Woodreaux is use a map specific economy and tech something like this:

Techs to fix economy and happiness early, fit Literature in their somewhere for the GL, COL, CS, Paper, Education, MC, Machinery (Engineer Prereq and PP prereq)), Liberalism. Pick PP as free tech (its needed for RP and its more expensive then GP)

Next trade for Feudalism, research Guilds, run caste if your already not, research gunpowder (chem prereq) and bulb Chemistry - and voila, 4H workshops. Then use another 1 or 2 GS for Scientific Method, then research Communism and switch to SP. Then research or trade Banking and use any more GS you get on Biology (get it when you need it), Gunpowder, Replaceable Parts, Rifling (or get after AL) Steam Power, and finally Assembly Line.

Are you sure? AFAIK rush-buying costs 3 for one . Kremlin reduces this cost for 33%, so it's 2 to 1. Wealth and hammer multipliers are equally strong. Therefore a town with 7-9 gold yields is about as strong as a workshop with all bonuses (4 ) when producing units. When producing wealth or science, it's twice as strong.

Yea, I'm sure. I've done a lot of WB testing. With the Kremlin on Normal speed it cost 336 gold for 1 turn and 192 gold for 2 turns. If your empire wide research was 3000 beakers per turn that would roughly translate into about 1100 gpt when building wealth (with 80-120 fully matured towns And grocers, markets, and bank) which would rush buy 5-6 Infantry in 2 turns. With nothing more than a forge, factory, and SP (if you can afford the health a coal plant is just a plus), A HE only needs to produce 36 base hammers or 29 base hammers while in police state to produce Infantry in 2 turns, normal speed. My math is $hit, but after all my testing and playing, I think that a HE outproduces a CE by at least 2-1.

The thing about a HE is once you take over a new city it instantly becomes a powerhouse as soon as you build the improvements - nothing has to grow. Farm, workshop, get 29 base hammers while in PS and 2 turn infantry instantly. I think that's why Unconquered Sun has so much success on Deity........Just the sheer volume of units a HE can spam out is really overpowered. Of course, the hardest part is balancing and transitioning your economy to get their in the first place. If you get there I don't see how you can lose.

HE takes time to get it set up but once it is watch out. A CE will definitely have more beakers per turn up to a certain era but eventually new cities and new cottages will take too much time to develop when compared to a HE, not to mention a cottaged city is usually low on hammers which translates into much slower bonus buildings. So Yes, cottages do produce roughly double the science and gold when all modifiers are in place, WHEN, but they never produce more units, where they are quite a bit behind.

Pictures:




1st 2 are of a CE with every civic, tech, and building modifiers. Slider is at 0% then builds 10 turns of wealth. Then I start rush buying for the next 11 turns with slider still at 0%. After 21 (at 20 every unit was at 1 turn so I went one more) turns the CE produces 72 units, more than I had expected. Rush buy is strong. OK, it's not 2-1 ^^.

Next 2 are of a HE without a coal plant. We are at 85% modifiers with PS, Buildings, and Civics. In 22 turns (I went 1 extra because every city was 1 unit away while at 21 turns the CE was 3 turns away) the HE produces 114 units. So a HE without all its modifiers still produces units 33-40% quicker. I'd still always make the argument that a HE will always have modifying buildings many times faster pushing its production advantage even further ahead.


http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/rush%20buy/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/rush%20buy/Civ4ScreenShot0001.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/rush%20buy/Civ4ScreenShot0002.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/rush%20buy/Civ4ScreenShot0004.jpg

That quote from UnconqueredSun Crusher1 brought up was from a thread that evaluated towns as a means of production via rush-buying - sort of the opposite of a hammer economy... and depending on how you look at it it's either hyperbole or simply wrong (if anyone wants me to back this up, I will... but I'm not sure that belongs here).

When we're using hammer to build research/wealth directly, it gets a lot worse because the final conversion rate is now 1:1 rather than 1:2 in favour of hammers.
Cities will have enough incidental commerce from things like rivers and trade routes that building at least one type of multiplier bulding will be attractive anyway. Production multipliers come late and cause health issues.

I'm mostly with KaytieKat... I love my hammers dearly, but building wealth/science with them seems a waste most of the time; I'd rather go overboard with infrastructure.
- Devoting a lot of your citizens to production that you are intending to use as such != a hammer economy. That's something one will do with every economic approach if you need the hammers for an army or adequate expansion.

***

Also:

Overflow tricks with discounted items or failure cash for wonders are special cases in that one will often get sizable bonuses on top of what we'd get if we're building gold directly. Especially in the early game where hammer multipliers are actually easier to come by than commerce multipliers, this can definitely be quite powerful.

1st 2 are of a CE with every civic, tech, and building modifiers. Slider is at 0% then builds 10 turns of wealth. Then I start rush buying for the next 11 turns with slider still at 0%. After 21 (at 20 every unit was at 1 turn so I went one more) turns the CE produces 72 units, more than I had expected. Rush buy is strong. OK, it's not 2-1 ^^.

Next 2 are of a HE without a coal plant. We are at 85% modifiers with PS, Buildings, and Civics. In 22 turns (I went 1 extra because every city was 1 unit away while at 21 turns the CE was 3 turns away) the HE produces 114 units. So a HE without all its modifiers still produces units 33-40% quicker. I'd still always make the argument that a HE will always have modifying buildings many times faster pushing its production advantage even further ahead.

Did you remember to take the rushing penalty away? You need to build an unit for one turn before rush buying it, otherwise it's much more expensive.

@ Iranon

First off, glad to see your posting ^^. You are one of my favorites to read, always very strong, correct thoughts. I used the Un Sun post because he is a great player who abuses the HE, and on Deity!, although he is obviously biased to them, just like Dave is biased to cottages.

Mklh -

I didn't take away the rushing penality because it would cut the CE production by 50%. That would only give them 40 units giving the HE 3X more production. Saving gold for queing a unit for 1 turn would never help a CE catch up, it would only save them money.

The only time a CE has the advantage would be in Rush buying ICBM's because like Iranon said, they get have a great advantage when building wealth. A CE produces roughly 3 gold to a HE 1 during wealth. A CE produces roughly 2 beakers to a HE 1 beaker when building research. A HE and CE will reach Communism and Democracy at a similar and comparable time. The question then becomes how many Towns and how many building modifiers does a CE actually have to this point. Then there's still the issue of new cities and growth vs new cities and up and running.

All I know is some great players use both methods with terrific success.

Thanks for the kind words. I hope my post didn't come across harsher than intended - I certainly don't play in the same league as UnconqueredSun. Maybe I should <gasp!> spend more time honing my instincts instead of crunching numbers...

I can see the appeal of a hammer economy. Especially on Deity, the ability to switch your output effortlessly and to stockpile whip overflow / chop hammers in the early game might compensate for the relatively low yields. After all, the environment is a lot more volatile so flexibility is good.

Using this in combination with some blatant overflow/compensation money abuse is decidedly delicious (while possible with regular economies as well, one might be reluctant to spend precious production on gold/science when one can't crank it up at will later).

Even without the dirty tricks, channeling your whole output into research to unlock something cool, then getting it in numbers almost instantly is also good... comparable to whipping scientists into new toys and not dependent on Representation for long-term use.

***

With regard to rushbuying: The penalty for instant rushing isn't too relevant in my opinion. If we want to use it mostly for units, I'd like to suggest my catch-all-solution for almost everything: Filler cities. Rushbuy doesn't care if the cities ordering the delivery have horrible multipliers, it just needs a letterbox.

I didn't take away the rushing penality because it would cut the CE production by 50%. That would only give them 40 units giving the HE 3X more production. Saving gold for queing a unit for 1 turn would never help a CE catch up, it would only save them money.



Found a couple more cities and that problem goes away. Even if they're garbage cities, you just need to build a barracks and you suddenly can crank out troops 33% faster because you can now avoid the 50% penalty. That seems worth the cost of a settler to me.

Seriously, what empire has enough cash to buy a unit in every city every turn? Take out the penalty and make it a real comparison. Besides, the time when rush buying with cash is at its best is when you get to direct your entire empire's commerce into the tremendous multipliers from Iron Works or Heroic Epic. Getting to put that extra +100% into your equation helps quite a bit and buying Wonders doesn't face nearly the same penalty when you consider that you get to direct every piece of your empire's commerce through those extra bonus multipliers.

Overflow tricks merit their own thread :satan:

I'm following the Hammer Economy succession game to see how well they cope without the +1 food from SP. In my opinion the best way to research techs for HE is to do a classic Liberalism beeline and continue to Communism, adopting HE civics about 1000 AD. The Liberalism -> SciMeth line favors bulbing, so at least one good GP farm is a must, cottaging is fine, especially in the capital, as long as the GP farm is secured early enough.

HE serves best an expanding empire. Any new cities can develop fast without burdening the core cities, any captured irrigated cities can be converted to hammers, and any captured towned cities are kept as they are, skipping bothering with Emancipation. Taxing the core to rushbuy basic infrastructure in new cities can be profitable in the long term of a closed system, but CIV is not a closed system, i.e. failing behind in tech will often lose you trading opportunities too.

Contrary to some opinions, HE is also good for EE, because the EE buildings produce their own "commerce". In BOTM 10 I had 1k EE/turn with zero slider assigned. All in all, HE is a good mix for other economy types, the only principle civic clash with CE is caste/emancipation, in fact Universal Suffrage is more a hammer civic than Police State ever was. There are no principle civic clashes between HE and SE, despite the latter can usually gain more from environmentalism.

HE is more at odds with Corps. My answer is: switch to Corps as soon as they can feed you in place of SP. So, once you had secured a good food Corps, go for it. I was going to do that in BOTM 10 but hit the domination limit, and I did it way back in Justinian's University which had a HE phase.



The real barrier to HE is more a psychological one. Many players are not used to building wealth/science at all, or even culture for the key one hundred mark. Instead they spam fairly useless buildings/wonders and forgo their windows of opportunity. I've seen it in SP, I've seen it in MP.

The one thing I dont like about the HE is that it's wierd. From purly a "civ as a game" approach I think the HE can be powerful. However it's wierd. How exactly do you "build" research? It doesnt make sence. I play civ mostly for fun and running a HE really brings out the "GAME" aspect of civ and takes away from the imersion of running an empire. However from a technical min/maxing approach it seems like the HE could certianly work.

It's a little odd no one has run a demo game on it. Or maybe a game where we all try a HE off the same start/save.

Here is a repost of a game I played using a HE with Mehemmed which some one else started.

Although I am a steady Immortal player I think it is bad manners to play different settings than the OP set forth :) . After all, what if a Monarch player is trying to learn how to get better and everyone plays on Emperor +. Not very helpful, LoL!

Hammer Economy, Gogogogogo Hammers, Yay!


Monarch/Epic


Tech Path:

Food techs, military, myst, pottery, writing, alphabet, currency, med, priest, monarchy, asthetics to literature, COL (traded), Philo (traded) CS, Paper (bulb), Education (bulb half), MC (+1 workshops), Machinery (Engineer Prereq and PP prereq), Liberalism.

Picked PP as free tech (prereq for RP and its more expensive than GP), Engineering (Chem prereq), Feudalism (traded), Guilds (+1 work shops), gunpowder (Chem prereq). Used 2 scientist to bulb Chemistry (+1 work shops) and immediately used 2 more scientist to bulb scientific method. Immediately started researching Communism. As I was researching communism I got 1 more GS and used him on Biology. Started banking and got another GS who was used on Biology, which I then finished, went back to Banking, RP (we already picked PP free tech), Rifling, Steam power, Assembly line.

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s305/cseanny/HE/Civ4ScreenShot0003.jpg
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I have 9X more production than 2nd place. Long live the HE. If you look at my research rate/gpt you'll notice I'm not having any problems researching expensive techs - speed is Epic.

Yes, I am work shopping over the cottages. A HE produces more units than gold + rush buying + Kremlin (i've already posted some screen shots in the HE help thread in regards to this, of course rush buying Nukes is > all) I had 22 workers with 10 cities and 30 workers with 15+ cities. Every city conquered had 10+ workshops, a forge, and a factory very quickly. Smaller cities also received a coal plant because they didnt have to worry about health. A tiny little city working 7 tiles with a forge, factory, and coal plant can produce 60 Hammers a turn on normal speed, or 1 Infantry every 2 turns.



Take out the penalty and make it a real comparison. Besides, the time when rush buying with cash is at its best is when you get to direct your entire empire's commerce into the tremendous multipliers from Iron Works or Heroic Epic

How would this help a CE catch up? The more cities you bring into the equation the further behind a CE gets. This is because a HE only needs to work 7 tiles at stagnating food to produce 60 hammers/research on normal speed with a forge, factory, and coal plant (small cities don't need to worry about health issues). So while the CE produces filler cities to enhance their production via rush buy those cities have a hard time paying for themselves and even then will be limited by gold. A HE filler city is already a powerhouse. In other words, spamming smaller filler cities will always benefit a HE. Imo, a HE should settle 2-3x as many cities, crowed together because they are so efficient with very few tiles and lead to massive amounts of production.