Here's a very noobish question. I've never really tried this civic as I'm more of a hammer person and have to really force myself to build cottages. Cottages, in my crude world view, are pretty useless in comparison to mines which allow me to make units and kill people.

I did run US once in a game and discovered that rush buying is insanely expensive and that to buy a single unit would bankrupt me completely...so I dismissed US as a silly and useless thing and never used it again.

Now on the forums I read about people using it effectively to buy entire armies with which to conquer the world. How is this possible? :eek:

In particular, if anybody has a save handy which demonstrates US-based mass production I'd be very interested in seeing it.

Here's a very noobish question. I've never really tried this civic as I'm more of a hammer person and have to really force myself to build cottages. Cottages, in my crude world view, are pretty useless in comparison to mines which allow me to make units and kill people.

I did run US once in a game and discovered that rush buying is insanely expensive and that to buy a single unit would bankrupt me completely...so I dismissed US as a silly and useless thing and never used it again.

Now on the forums I read about people using it effectively to buy entire armies with which to conquer the world. How is this possible? :eek:

In particular, if anybody has a save handy which demonstrates US-based mass production I'd be very interested in seeing it.

You will need to cottage spam in order to do this. US + FS + State property = money money money!

When you say cottage spam, you mean as many cottages as humanly possible, while neglecting other improvements? But how do you build anything? Where do the hammers come from for the first few thousand years? :confused:

How much money can you expect to make per turn with a massively cottage saturated empire?

I could give a save but unfortunately not many use the antiquated BUG 3.6 I do :)

Rushbuying is mostly only effective later in the game when you can get 1000 or more gold in 1 turn. It also almost always involves stopping research. As US is the only way you can channel teching power into making an army rushbuy can be very very powerful. With the Kremlin it's even more nuts.

Also note that there's a penalty for buying stuff that don't have hammers invested. The normal turn cycle goes
1. Build unit for 1 turn everywhere
2. Rushbuy everywhere
3. Repeat

EDIT: Mass cottage tactics use specialized cities without cottages for production. Later in the game mass cottage riverside cities can be real production monsters as well with a Levee + US.

I could give a save but unfortunately not many use the antiquated BUG 3.6 I do :)

Rushbuying is mostly only effective later in the game when you can get 1000 or more gold in 1 turn. It also almost always involves stopping research. As US is the only way you can channel teching power into making an army rushbuy can be very very powerful. With the Kremlin it's even more nuts.

Also note that there's a penalty for buying stuff that don't have hammers invested. The normal turn cycle goes
1. Build unit for 1 turn everywhere
2. Rushbuy everywhere
3. Repeat

Okay, so to summarise then, the concept is: cottage extensively, which weakens production but gives good tech rate; then late game, convert this powerful economy back into hammers through rush buying...

How do you survive in the meantime? Having enough cottages to make rush buying feasible must mean having no workshops, lumbermills etc, and thus perilously weak military production, no?

When you say cottage spam, you mean as many cottages as humanly possible, while neglecting other improvements? But how do you build anything? Where do the hammers come from for the first few thousand years? :confused:

How much money can you expect to make per turn with a massively cottage saturated empire?

No, that's not what I'm saying. I use 1/4 ratio for production/cottage cities. And you need food for cottage cities too. And of course you can have a healthy economy some other way too, cottaging is just the easiest IMO. But you know, building a huge army with US should be the last straw, because you will have to turn the tech slider off to do that. Normally you should not have to do that.

How do you survive in the meantime? Having enough cottages to make rush buying feasible must mean having no workshops, lumbermills etc, and thus perilously weak military production, no?

Well, the cottage cities always have food as they need to grow big, and that means :whipped: (also needed to get necessary infra in the cottage cities)

There are always a few specialized production cities to provide the bulk of the :hammers:, though.

Anyway, IMO rushbuy as an army buildup method is a pretty advanced tactic and shouldn't be used unless you know the things involved inside and out.

$$$ buy is enhanced by :gold: multipliers in the commerce cities. While getting there you do still need a :hammers: city or two and probably a GP farm.

It still loses out to SP workshops unless you involve the kremlin, though (and even after kremlin since you can't use police state if you're spamming units...not to mention WW considerations). On the bright side you get the full +100% :gold: buildings sooner and they don't stifle your health.

Note that mature towns each give a hammer, and with a levee their returns are not insignificant in direct hammers. I've cottaged up and due to a nice diplo situation, just rode it out to tanks (example: my game for immortal university willem). I actually didn't rush buy the tanks, just produced them and flattened contemporary rivals nearby using forge/factory/power I'd slowly built until then. Civics were US/FS/Eman/Environ/FR.

Cottage cities in late game with a levee will often hold 30 base hammers (windmill the hills). The better ones have over 40 base hammers. Not great, but doable. Turning the slider off to $$$ buy means you can skip the :hammers: infra and sacrifice tech to temporarily divert your entire empire to production. Doing so well results in enough land to win, but as Silu says it's a fairly advanced tactic and you have to be able to recognize the potential for it in advance.

I think it's better to err on the side of throwing up too many cottages rather than too few. If you find you need more production it's relatively easy to bulldoze them in favor of workshops/watermills/etc. The reverse is certainly not true because cottages need to be worked to grow into towns.

Short on production early in the game? Whip, or secondarily, chop.

In the window prior State Property/Factories and after Banking the quickest way to produce an army is rush buying. For example with a nice lead I love to rush buy cavalry. You don't need to spam cottages as at this point 4 cities, including a bureaucracy capital, out of ten or so can support most of the army production via cash in hammer weak cities while you will at least have your HE city naturally producing units. Not sure if it is mathematically the most efficient during this time, but it would not surprise me. With the Kremlin I'd imagine it gets even better prior to AS/Fascism and/or Bio. Just think of it as a way to turn a huge tech empire very quickly into a huge production empire using gold as hammers.

Just an obvious add on; if you manage to get Cristo Redentor and love to micro and don't mind fav. civic bonus, researching and gold rush buying is possible to some degree. Extra bonus is having some food corp.
Switch between representation: 1turn for initial hammers, universal suffrage rush buy, switch back. Eventually it's possible to spend more turns into representation to collect extra money.

There is also a key traits to consider in this discussion: FIN and ORG. FIN is obvious...Organized leaders are able to manage large empires with huge economies. I have only ever successfully purchased invasion armies (to my memory) with Darius in BtS and Washington in Vanilla...both FIN/ORG. And in both cases, there was also massive manufacturing going on too - it was simply a matter of pumping 3 units every 2 turns in most cities, and 1 unit for 2 turns in those producing next to no :hammers:. You can raise an army which can begin an invasion in about 10 turns from a purely defensive position. (Assuming you've been saving some cash to do this)

I'll include the save from the Darius version. I bought most of those units on one turn's build (to cheapen the rate of exchange). A few were just cranked by the insane military production city I have (IW/HE). I should mention that prior to the development of tanks, my kingdom went from Kyoto/Madrid in the N to Tarsus/tlateloco in the S. All modern wars were fought in US, with significant aid of rush-bought units, and mostly while building major wonders in my biggest production cities (including one in the IW/HE city)

Or another way of making a long story short: I've only been able to raise an invasion army this way was when I've been far enough ahead, with ideal conditions, to choose between space and conquest.

I have on many occasions and with more varied trait combinations, rush bought defensive units in quantities sufficient to save the game for a cultural or Space victory.

I could give a save but unfortunately not many use the antiquated BUG 3.6 I do :)
Have you installed it as a standalone mod? If you've installed it to Custom Assets like most people do, there will be no compatibility problems.

How do you survive in the meantime? Having enough cottages to make rush buying feasible must mean having no workshops, lumbermills etc, and thus perilously weak military production, no?

Alternatively, it may mean sufficient military but less infrastructure than you are accustomed to.

Alternatively, it may mean sufficient military but less infrastructure than you are accustomed to.
This is never the case, in my experience. The keys are good diplomacy with neighbors, and a small, technically advanced military stationed in such a way as to allow quick deployment to several (at least 2, preferably 3) cities within one turn. and like Silu said, the whip and a few specialized production cities are more than enough to build such a force. Alternately, it is very possible to have multi-purpose cities which both produce in good quantities and generate significant profit. Many of the cities in my save file I posted were like this (And at the point of the save, most are like this thanks to mining inc). Look at Kyoto and Persepolis and you'll see cities that are somewhat specialized (:gold: in Kyoto and :science: in Persepolis) but which both are significant production cities beside the :commerce: specialties.

I'm a rather frequent user of US for rushbuying.
But I mostly rushbuy infra, letting my military cities build up the army...

For an example of rushbuying an army you could search sisutil's ALC with Mali.
He rushed tanks for a good win.

Have you installed it as a standalone mod? If you've installed it to Custom Assets like most people do, there will be no compatibility problems.

Well... I like to be unique!! Just kidding, I'm a noob, I didn't know you could do such a thing.

Well, I also install the mods as standalone.

me too, necessary for HoF and GotM compatibility

Damn, guess I'm not unique after all. Installing in CustomAssets->

me too, necessary for HoF and GotM compatibility

AFAIK, BUFFY overrides the settings in Custom Assets and can be run even with BUG installed there.

The exchange rate is 3 gold per hammer, 2 with the Kremlin. This can work out very well in the Renaissance if we have only forges for production but banks, grocers and markets for gold and when mines don't yet gain the bonus from railroads.

Mine: 2.5:hammers:
Village: 2.7:hammers:
Town: 5.9:hammers:

Universal Suffrage for rushbuying remains competitive indefinitely if we can secure the Kremlin. Assuming State Property in the endgame and therefore +110% hammer multipliers and +100% gold multipliers:

Mine: 6.3:hammers:
Workshop: 8.4:hammers:
Town (no Kremlin): 6.8:hammers:
Town (Kremlin): 9.1:hammers:

Straight production is still attractive for cities with more than the usual multipliers - Ironworks, Heroic Epic, possibly military academies. A cottage spammer will still want to set up a dedicated military city because unplanned wars are too costly as it is (see below). Also, dedicated military cities with xp bonuses will wish to crank out more than 1 unit every 2 turns, which translates into playing more for rushbuy.

*

Soft advantages of a rushbuy economy:

- You can spend the gold on anything anywhere: on units in your overseas bridgehead during a war or on infrastructure in underdeveloped cities that would take a lot of time to become profitable on their own. If nothing else, there is always ale and whores (buying resources for Standard Ethanol and bribes for a war ally).
- You can have an efficient economy setup that's good for the entire game while you are still in the Renaissance. By the time you get access to Rifles or Cannons, you can focus on military and never look back.
- You can postpone industrialisation until the health problems are solved. You can keep riding your military advantage to victory and simply switch from Rifles to Infantry; no need to stop for factories if the warring remains good.
- Since Emancipation fits right into your playstyle, you might have less trouble with happiness.
- If you don't need production at the moment, you can get whatever else you need. Other economies can build wealth or science, but that is a lot less efficient.

There are some disadvantages though:

- Wonders can't be rushed efficiently, projects can't be rushed at all. 1 or 2 dedicated production cities might not be enough for a timely space victory.
- The culture slider becomes a very expensive tool to combat temporary unhappiness.
- If Universal Suffrage is crucial for your production, you can't run Representation. With settled specialists, more corporation food than needed to feed all good tiles and free specialists, this can hurt your research quite badly.
- In the time before Universal Suffrage becomes efficient, you cannot increase production easily. Even if you run Slavery (contrary to your game plan once Emancipation is available) your empire will not be set up to use it well. Expected unexpected wars to cost more than expected.

*

I find this a very powerful economy, but despite its simplicity it is terribly unintuitive at first.
Your leader will also matter... Elizabeth is much better at this than Peter for example (better improvements from FIN, better gold multipliers, Redcoat rampage at the time when this shines the most vs. free lategame specialists and a health bonus to make industry/large specialist-driven cities less problematic).

Many interesting and helpful comments here, thanks everybody. That was a particuarly informative post from Iranon.

Towns with kremlin actually a better value than caste workshops? That sure is surprising! The extra hammer for towns doesnt matter when rushbuying so that wasnt included in the towns' value calculation i hope?

Always glad to help.

@ xarthaz: The hammer from towns was included. Care to elaborate why you think it shouldn't be? Hammers invested are not lost in rushbuying. You only pay for the difference, and current hammers overflow into the next item.

IF the city only actually builds the item for 1 turn, then the production only counts on that turn and the cost of the rest comes from treasury.

Aah, but i looked it only from the context of production per unit, rather than production per turn, where only the latter characterizes the city itself. So youre right!

But then you have to build production buildings in addition to all the gold buildings. Assuming no production bonuses, town would go down to 8. Is the 1.1 extra hammer per town worth a factory, power plant and unhealthiness?

I checked the hurry production uber-thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=145687
and there's conflicting information whether or not production multipliers work with kremlin, possibly from different patches.

Page 1 has
Gold Cost=Hammer cost*3*Kremlin*Wonder*Startup*(1+s)/(1+2s)
(s is production bonus)
or later
C = [ H / ( 1+B) * K * W * Z ]

Generally speaking, this strategy only applies for large, complex economies which already have massive health bonuses (from trade resources, grocers, aqueducts [and I find EXP a very strong trait for these endgames for this reason]). While growth will slow as a result of factories and power plants (I luvs me the TGD for this reason too), the losses are small when compared to the opportunities presented by the ability to create a significant force quickly, and without population loss, making this approach, when feasible, superior to whipping/drafting.

Always glad to help.

@ xarthaz: The hammer from towns was included. Care to elaborate why you think it shouldn't be? Hammers invested are not lost in rushbuying. You only pay for the difference, and current hammers overflow into the next item.

Your analysis is good, but IMO missing the fact that the hammer guys can add one last throw into their unit production ----> police state. This is also useful as as soon as one has to bump the culture slider, the yield from those towns starts dropping.

Nevertheless, $$$ buy is a very good option for someone who's cottaged up and wants to war.

@ TMIT: Ah, a good point. You should know better than to keep me going by now :)

With Police State, the yields become 7.1:hammers: for mines and 9.4:hammers: for workshops - the latter narrowly beats towns unless the leader is Financial (which raises their effective yield to 10.1:hammers:).
Military Academies allow workshops to take the lead again (10.4:hammers:, 11.4:hammers: under Police State).

So Police State could mean that a flatland square had a higher effective production yield. Only... cottages can be built on grassland hills and the edge of a town over a mine is still 5 times as large as the edge of a workshop over a town.
If we use windmills (after all, both policies want to avoid farms), Universal Suffrage allows us to channel their commerce yields into production as well... same as with all incidental commerce. Talking about commerce... what is paying the bills? 7-commerce-towns are still the best source of gold under Police State, and every single one loses some hammers.

In a contest of theoretical efficiency, I see no real hope for Police State unless the cottage empire either runs into crippling war weariness or is paying the instant rush penalty on most of its units.
Both are possible in a case of total war but Emancipation is a happier civic than Caste System and new conquests give us more shipping addresses to avoid the instant rush penalty (if we want to build infrastructure there first, the goldrush economy also wins).

@ TMIT: Ah, a good point. You should know better than to keep me going by now :)


Well, your contributions to the forums are very insightful...so keeping you going is probably a good thing, especially for people still learning.

It's hard to argue that the best setup at max potential is anything but towns everywhere. The hard part, of course, is getting towns all over like that. Even after the full set of :gold: multipliers become available, most of the land will not be towns. Much of it may not even be cottaged yet (instead choosing to go farms -----> whip infra or units and unlock oxford in a bur cap). The issue then becomes hitting democracy, cottaging it up, and getting the gold multipliers set up to actually $$$ buy (though a lot of them will have been whipped in already). Then, the cottages have to grow.

I can't seem to get this running in time to consistently field renaissance forces using $$$ buy on immortal (much better luck with drafting or just beelining a military tech and whipping...efficiency be damned). I feel this becomes much stronger for early industrial (drafting loses power, and you're set to use the early industrial units immediately with all infra pre-set).

Iranon, what do you think is more efficient: Police State, SP without Caste or rushbuy without Kremlin? (Not a theoretical question, but a decision I have to make in a game I'm playing).

Mines and workshops both outperform towns in sheer efficiency for hammers under those circumstances.

However, that isn't the same as empire-wide efficiency. Tricky to say for sure without knowing things like extent of cottaging so far, overall level of infrastructure in your cities, slider values (how much on gold to pay the bills? Any culture to handle happiness?), the civics the opponents run (especially with regard to emancipation), the map type (will the ability to rushbuy units anywhere you wish make a difference?), your long-term plans (is this a quick war to secure some extra land, or will you keep going until domination/conquest? If the latter, can you win with the techs you have?).

I'd usually prefer cottages; give me a save and I will be more specific.

Sorry for being so vague. It's this game (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8493139&postcount=41). Some details: I have the Internet, I have a huge room to deal with unhappiness, it's the war to end all wars and it's very likely that the game will end while I'm at war or because of my war.

Edit: If you still want the save, I'll be happy to provide it.

Edit 2: UN banned Caste.

Not quite related to US, but take a look at how I cottaged my capital in this game:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8446929&postcount=38

Cottaging over all those improvements instead of farming and mining them meant I was able to expand to 9 cities or so and be ahead in tech. Once I had scouted and realized the room this was my best idea to REX - hammers aren't important when a poor REX will give the AI a dominant land or tech position.

After early exploration you can also quickly have an idea of how many possible cottages you could have. If diplo is favorable you'll be able to count off how much gold your empire would be pulling at US. Then you plan for it by gold multipliers and your tech path.

I'd stay in Universal Suffrage but refrain from building more cottages there; workshops are good enough. you have more commerce than you can use effectively otherwiser, workshopping over those towns is unnecessary and the ability to spam-buy infratructure in new conquests will make you gain mass more quickly.

A few nitpicks: You have too many farms. Farms and mines are a suboptimal combination because changing 1 farm to a workshop and 2 mines to windmills will give you 4 free commerce. Farms for specialists are even less good, especially in cities beyond the health cap.
Also, don't build wealth. Turning hammers into gold 1:1 only to turn gold into hammers 3:1 is not going to work out.

Not quite related to US, but take a look at how I cottaged my capital in this game:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8446929&postcount=38

Cottaging over all those improvements instead of farming and mining them meant I was able to expand to 9 cities or so and be ahead in tech. Once I had scouted and realized the room this was my best idea to REX - hammers aren't important when a poor REX will give the AI a dominant land or tech position.

After early exploration you can also quickly have an idea of how many possible cottages you could have. If diplo is favorable you'll be able to count off how much gold your empire would be pulling at US. Then you plan for it by gold multipliers and your tech path.

I'm amazed that you would cottage over such a generous bounty of splendid resources! :eek: Surely the lovely wonders you could build with both marble and stone in the BFC would more than compensate for a few :commerce:, or is that the noob in me talking?

I also weep for the shiny wonders that could have been built there.

I'd stay in Universal Suffrage but refrain from building more cottages there; workshops are good enough. you have more commerce than you can use effectively otherwiser, workshopping over those towns is unnecessary and the ability to spam-buy infratructure in new conquests will make you gain mass more quickly.
OK. Will stay there.

A few nitpicks: You have too many farms. Farms and mines are a suboptimal combination because changing 1 farm to a workshop and 2 mines to windmills will give you 4 free commerce. Farms for specialists are even less good, especially in cities beyond the health cap.
Thanks, I'll alter the tile distribution.
Also, don't build wealth. Turning hammers into gold 1:1 only to turn gold into hammers 3:1 is not going to work out.
I'm building wealth because I was running an espionage campaign to prevent Wang Kon from finishing the Internet and wanted to run 100% Espionage and forgot to switch back to what I was building before. I won't do that anymore.

Thank you very much Iranon for taking the time to do this. I really appreciate it. Herzlichen Dank! :goodjob:

I would never cottage mines or resources. But then again, I'm just a noobish noble player.

I would never cottage mines or resources. But then again, I'm just a noobish noble player.

I cottaged Silk and Incense in my last game (with Mansa). He's Financial of course, so with a cottage I was able to get 3 :commerce: right away on those tiles, and I was able to cottage those tiles a very long time before getting Calendar (I had other sources of happiness). I did it knowing I could switch to plantations if necessary. Fortunately, I had another Incense, in a location that was not in a BFC, nor one where I would want a BFC due to desert. (The Incense I cottaged was on plains--I don't see that every game :cool:). The Silk, I would have switched to a plantation, but it wasn't necessary as I won the game still with some excess :).

I would never cottage mines or resources. But then again, I'm just a noobish noble player.You shouldn't say never. If your territory has a surfeit of plantation resources (more than you're likely to ever be able to trade effectively) then cottaging sugar, incense or silk can make perfect sense. A cottage on sugar gives up exactly one food to gain all kinds of :commerce: when you assume the cottage will mature. Just the cottage is as good as a plantation in terms of :commerce:. So if I have more than enough sugar for trade in my territory, and some of it falls in a city where sacrificing one food a thousand years from now won't make much/any difference, I will cottage it without any qualms. Silk and incense are a little riskier, as they are worth more :commerce: with plantations than is sugar, and you could have a net loss if you are close to calendar or if the game will end before the cottages fully mature.

Not quite related to US, but take a look at how I cottaged my capital in this game:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8446929&postcount=38

Cottaging over all those improvements instead of farming and mining them meant I was able to expand to 9 cities or so and be ahead in tech. Once I had scouted and realized the room this was my best idea to REX - hammers aren't important when a poor REX will give the AI a dominant land or tech position.

After early exploration you can also quickly have an idea of how many possible cottages you could have. If diplo is favorable you'll be able to count off how much gold your empire would be pulling at US. Then you plan for it by gold multipliers and your tech path.

Please tell me you didn't cottage corn tiles!

He surely did cottage corn tiles, then challenged people to out-expand him ;).

He surely did cottage corn tiles, then challenged people to out-expand him ;).

And did anyone? Where is the 4000BC save on this?

@Grashopa: What do you mean hammers aren't important for rexing? Do you mean you are just chopping everything? I count 6food and 4hammers you are missing out on in exchange for a handful of commerce that will get bulldozed later anyway.

The save is in the thread, from the single post link I posted.

The game was emperor and there was a huge amount of space with 2 ridiculous jungle sites that would get taken by the AI if you don't settle them early. I'm arguing that early commerce is as valuable to a good REX - # of cities and tech position are important. And yeah I was chopping everything out. I went straight for writing so likely I couldn't improve anything anyway. But an early academy and 40+ beakers in the first 50? turns can be useful. Not to say the play was that optimal since someone else just knocked out all the hammer cities and started taking everyone out at cat's.

The save is in the thread, from the single post link I posted.

The game was emperor and there was a huge amount of space with 2 ridiculous jungle sites that would get taken by the AI if you don't settle them early. I'm arguing that early commerce is as valuable to a good REX - # of cities and tech position are important. And yeah I was chopping everything out. I went straight for writing so likely I couldn't improve anything anyway. But an early academy and 40+ beakers in the first 50? turns can be useful. Not to say the play was that optimal since someone else just knocked out all the hammer cities and started taking everyone out at cat's.

I will take a look at the game and hold most of my comments until then. However, with a 9 city REX (haven't played emperor in a while so could be a bit off) it would seem like an academy wouldn't get much early use due to maintenance, even if you cottage everything. I am not trying to tear down your strat just because its different, I just wonder if the lost production and food is worth it. The idea of cottaging bonus tiles comes up all the time and usually the determination seems to be that its not such a good idea, especially in cases like this where you have to bulldoze them later.

Forgive me if I am pointing out the obvious but no one so far has pointed out possibly the most important point, though Iranon and TMIT got close and Iranon's post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8494053&postcount=22) was a fantastic summary of almost everything you need to know.

The most important point (IMO) with rushbuying is that if you are going to do things like rushing units, then you should be doing it from cities that have a lot of hammer multipliers. When I have set up successful late game rush-buy economies, the Heroic Epic city and Ironworks city would usually be rushing something every second turn at minimum. Outside of those cities, try to limit rushing to cities that already have forge, factory and power. If a city doesn't have the full 100% of production multipliers, buying the production multiplier buildings is something I try to avoid but if you really are rolling in gold then it can be worth it I guess.

Kremlin is icing on the cake for rushbuys.

Especially to the OP, who noticed that rush-buying was so expensive, it's not so bad when you are doing it from cities with 200% or more in hammer multipliers!

IMO rushbuying is more effective on the slower gamespeeds because the two major production cities (Ironworks and Heroic Epic) are less likely to be building units at close to 1 per turn naturally anyway. Especially on Marathon, it might be pretty insane to put the HE and IW together and have a city that can produce units crazy fast and crazy cheap (using rushbuy). :)

$$$ rush is simply gold to hammers. Starting with your best military cities first (after hammer investment) makes sense on a lot of levels, but if you are truly attempting to raise an army quickly, you're going to be rushing in much more than just those.

Especially to the OP, who noticed that rush-buying was so expensive, it's not so bad when you are doing it from cities with 200% or more in hammer multipliers!

hum, AFAIK the hammer multipliers aren't used for the price determination.
Of course, in a city with loads of "normal" hammers, you aren't paying as many hammers as you would somewhere else.
But what's the point in buying something where it's built fast anyway?

When I do buy units, I buy them at the front.

hum, AFAIK the hammer multipliers aren't used for the price determination.
Of course, in a city with loads of "normal" hammers, you aren't paying as many hammers as you would somewhere else.
But what's the point in buying something where it's built fast anyway?

When I do buy units, I buy them at the front.

You're right. Seems I am still living in a world of an older patch as well!

I could have sworn that hammer multipliers used to get applied to rush buying. Anyway, in this case, Kremlin is not just icing on the cake it's now pretty much the most important thing. :lol:

Also, no wonder no one else had pointed it out earlier, because it's not correct. :lol:

So as you said cabert, there's no special reason to rushbuy from cities with high hammer multipliers first. If anything, when rushbuying units one should emphasise rushing from cities with free promos or extra xp (e.g. West Point and Red Cross).

I find it interesting that slavery is affected by factories etc. yet rush buying isn't. In one of the patches did they perceive it be overpowered when an empire created gold with multipliers and then used another set of multipliers when rush buying?

You still want to prioritize rushing the better hammer cities first. They still tend to have the best military infra (and XP to troops), and they are cheaper to ensure max output from them. Still, if these are running 1/turn or you just have more money (very likely if you're setting up the gold infra) then $$$ buy from almost every city (prolly a few can't) is possible every other turn (easy to get all with kremlin).

You still want to prioritize rushing the better hammer cities first. They still tend to have the best military infra (and XP to troops), and they are cheaper to ensure max output from them. Still, if these are running 1/turn or you just have more money (very likely if you're setting up the gold infra) then $$$ buy from almost every city (prolly a few can't) is possible every other turn (easy to get all with kremlin).

Haven't you kinda got it backwards? Rather than prioritising the better hammer cities first which just happen to have better military infra, you should be prioritising cities with the better military infra which tend to have hammer-multiplying infrastructure.

For example, it's better to rushbuy from a city that has only a barracks than from a city that has only Ironworks and Heroic Epic and no barracks.

and they are cheaper to ensure max output from them. Could you clarify this point further? I thought the whole mistake I made earlier was not realising that in fact it's not any more efficient from high hammer multiplier cities. You might be able to rushbuy in more cities but unless you are using the units almost instantly it is of no real benefit. Your steady-state rate of unit production will be no different whether you do top-ups in your main cities frequently or you instead opt to occasionally do a massive purchase from a hammer-weak city.

Could you clarify this point further? I thought the whole mistake I made earlier was not realising that in fact it's not any more efficient from high hammer multiplier cities. You might be able to rushbuy in more cities but unless you are using the units almost instantly it is of no real benefit. Your steady-state rate of unit production will be no different whether you do top-ups in your main cities frequently or you instead opt to occasionally do a massive purchase from a hammer-weak city.

I think he meant that it's cheaper since they output more hammers during that 1 turn avoid-penalty building period (per unit). And if they have settled GGs or something then it's indeed better to buy these since gold->hammers is always a constant no matter where you buy, even though being cheaper doesn't matter in the long run, just the short term (which does matter sometimes).

For example, it's better to rushbuy from a city that has only a barracks than from a city that has only Ironworks and Heroic Epic and no barracks.

You can't build the Heroic Epic in a city until you have a barracks there. :p But your point holds--since multipliers don't apply, it makes sense to rush troops that will come out with more XP and/or free promotions.

Could you clarify this point further? [snip]

Looks like I was beaten to the punch, but: I think maybe he meant that since some cities produce a lot of hammers (or a lot of hammers specifically for units, as in the Heroic Epic city), it is cheaper to rushbuy a given unit there (since it will have more hammers invested in it) than in a city producing only a few hammers per turn. I don't have much experience with rushbuy, though, so I'm not sure whether the difference is material--probably depends on the situation and map.

I'm guessing, based on Iranon's figures, that if forge/factory/PP applied to rush-buying it would become hands-down the most efficient hammer/tile mechanism in the game - blowing everything else including SP/Caste/PS/Workshops out of the water. Too powerful indeed

I usually switch to US when I get the chance but because I usually run a CE, it's to get the :hammers: for by production. I do have a question as to how most of you prepare for the switch. I run HR until US. When I make the switch, my cities because unhappy.

So is it just a question of looking at the individual cities, see how may happies you have and what the impact would be by making the switch and then build colosseums, temples, and other happiness generators?

Supposedly organized religion and police state (well...) modify the buying cost.

So is it just a question of looking at the individual cities, see how may happies you have and what the impact would be by making the switch and then build colosseums, temples, and other happiness generators?

Yes, F1 is a great help in this. Usually Forges and Markets are the most efficient ones at this stage though with a lot of trade possibilities going on.

Supposedly organized religion and police state (well...) modify the buying cost.

Yes, esp w/ the whip. Generally speaking it's not possible to use police state and rush buy and the same time.

pre-industrial/modern age its pretty useless.

pre-industrial/modern age its pretty useless.

My favorite rush buy stage of the game for units is the Renaisance(sp).

Industrial/Modern I tend to use it to rush buildings in infrastructure lacking cities.

Supposedly organized religion and police state (well...) modify the buying cost.

Interesting. Are they the only hammer multipliers that work, then?

Interesting. Are they the only hammer multipliers that work, then?
they work for whipping, not for $rushing.

I'm not going any further into technicalities, but I want to emphasize something obvious :
you can $rush wherever you want, no matter where the money comes from.

It's very important when conquering "multiple border cities". I mean some cities won't have any workable tile for a while, but you may still want an airport, a theatre or a courthouse soon there.
Nothing else does it as good as $rushing.

they work for whipping, not for $rushing.

I'm not going any further into technicalities, but I want to emphasize something obvious :
you can $rush wherever you want, no matter where the money comes from.

It's very important when conquering "multiple border cities". I mean some cities won't have any workable tile for a while, but you may still want an airport, a theatre or a courthouse soon there.
Nothing else does it as good as $rushing.

Indeed. I always thought rushing an airport on a new landmass would be very inefficient but as it turns out it can't be any more efficient anyway. :lol:

Some other idea I had with US.

I've tried (and aborted, because it got too tedious, and I was not going to win the gauntlet) a domination game with portugal and the pyramids on a terra map, using $ rushing.

I planned it this way :
- drop a settler and a unit on the new world a lot sooner than the AIs.
- go 100% $
- $ rush settlers and things directly in your new cities.
- win.

It turned out that the new world + my old world part wasn't enough for a win. I had to go to war nonetheless. So I dropped it.
But you get the point.

Yes, esp w/ the whip. Generally speaking it's not possible to use police state and rush buy and the same time.

Just to underscore the point, it is not possible, unless you have a mod that changes the Government civics--because Police State and Universal Suffrage are both Government civics, so you can't be in both at the same time!

Some other idea I had with US.

I've tried (and aborted, because it got too tedious, and I was not going to win the gauntlet) a domination game with portugal and the pyramids on a terra map, using $ rushing.

I planned it this way :
- drop a settler and a unit on the new world a lot sooner than the AIs.
- go 100% $
- $ rush settlers and things directly in your new cities.
- win.

It turned out that the new world + my old world part wasn't enough for a win. I had to go to war nonetheless. So I dropped it.
But you get the point.I've done this successfully as well. The way I did it was building 8 knights, putting them on 4 carracks and taking several fully developed barbarian towns guarded by 2-3 longbows each. Then, I bought more troops in the captured cities and took more barbarian towns. Once a little momentum built up, I was controlling the entire new world quite quickly, and never had to stop growth in the new cities for settlers or the whip. (I did have to build a few workers)

This pretty much requires one had the foresight to build the Pyramids, though.

Just to underscore the point, it is not possible, unless you have a mod that changes the Government civics--because Police State and Universal Suffrage are both Government civics, so you can't be in both at the same time!


Actually you can get some of the effects of each on a reasonably good tradeoff rate.

For instance in a modern war you can queue up:
1. Infantry
2. Arty
3. Fighter
4. MG
5. Bomber

And rushbuy all of them in one turn. Next turn (assuming CR) you can flip back to PS and not only will all your :hammers: overflow with bonus, you also get the WW reduction. When I actually need a PS economy with a rushbuy/Kremlin economy, building or taking the CR becomes a high priority. The :hammers: you can only get while you are actually working it, but the rushbuy can easily be abused with CR empowered swaps.

The best early game use of US via the mids is on water maps. Colossus + FIN gives you 2 :food: 4 :commerce: which is food equivalent to working plains hills at a lower cap. With a market and grocer that is better than working green hills/farms. Not overwhelming, but when you are seriously short of :hammers: outside of the cap, you can quickly raise armies, and almost as importantly you can raise them in far away places (perhaps places you can no longer send galleys). For the truly watery maps, $buy off of coastal :commerce: may be the only game in town.

I would also note that US, in general, is useful for diplomatic purposes. Voting yourself and everyone else in allows you to no longer have to annoy (or avoid) people looking to get you to eat anarchy to swap into something somewhat useless for you. Likewise, voting the AI out of civics can be extremely handy.

they work for whipping, not for $rushing.

I'm not going any further into technicalities, but I want to emphasize something obvious :
you can $rush wherever you want, no matter where the money comes from.

It's very important when conquering "multiple border cities". I mean some cities won't have any workable tile for a while, but you may still want an airport, a theatre or a courthouse soon there.
Nothing else does it as good as $rushing.


Are you sure? Because everyone knows that hammer multipliers work with slavery, so when posts singled out organized religion but also specified hammer multipliers not working, this means they're not talking about slavery.

Slavery gives you 30 (45 with the Kremlin) base hammers per population.
Universal suffrage gives you 1 final hammer per 3 gold spent (1 hammer per 2 gold spent with the Kremlin).

The mechanics work in totally different ways, and this only makes sense when you think about it. Both are implemented so that yield multipliers affect them once.
Otherwise Slavery would become obsolete as soon as we had decent production multipliers or Universal Suffrage would be overpowered in well-developed cities because we'd run gold yields through the multiplier twice.

Universal suffrage gives you 1 final hammer per gold spent.


This is a confusing way to express the transfer function ;) I think I know what you mean by "gold" here but that is not the usual meaning. Remember the gold used by US can come from many sources besides the commerce slider and MGB multipliers. Building wealth, running merchants, a GM mission and selling technologies to backward AIs can all raise substantial amounts of gold to fund US.

For instance if I have 6000 gold stockpiled (from many sources) and start to use it all for US rushbuying I will get 2000 hammers, and with Kremlin 3000 hammers. So a better way to express your statement would be:

Universal suffrage gives you 1 final hammer per 3 gold spent and with Kremlin per 2 gold spent .

My use of gold is the simple sense of accumulated wealth.

Erk, that is what I actually meant and what I wrote contained a horrible typo... there was supposed to be a 3 in that phrase. Fixed now.

:lol: np. That caught my eye, and it puzzled me as to what you could mean, so I replied before reading the whole thread. I see in post 22 that you have set out a thorough analysis of tile outputs and use the correct figures. I knew that you knew the correct figures :D

Actually you can get some of the effects of each on a reasonably good tradeoff rate.

[snip]

Next turn (assuming CR) you can flip back to PS and not only will all your :hammers: overflow with bonus, you also get the WW reduction. When I actually need a PS economy with a rushbuy/Kremlin economy, building or taking the CR becomes a high priority.

Interesting. Thank you for pointing that out. I haven't played in the modern era since getting BTS--still trying to find the right difficulty level for me, as well as a map size and settings that let the game go for a good amount of time, yet don't lead to too much computer lag and micromanagement for me. Incidentally, I'm guessing that if you leave Police State, WW goes back up, right?

The best early game use of US via the mids is on water maps. Colossus + FIN gives you 2 :food: 4 :commerce: which is food equivalent to working plains hills at a lower cap.

I don't quite follow you on this. "Food equivalent"? Do you mean "hammer equivalent" with full gold multipliers? Though in that case, you said "early game" so I'm guessing no Kremlin, and then it's not quite hammer equivalent, right?

Wow. This is a lot of information about rush buying, which I've never considered to be the best part of this civic. I'm almost always in it for the hammers from the towns. This and the Levee turn many of my cottage cities into awesome multi-taskers late game. If I pile on Mining Inc, which I try to do when running a cottage economy game that runs late, those commerce cities are also great airforce builders, spaceship builders, and even late game wonder builders.

I will rush buy things like theaters/courthouses in recently conquered cities, just to get them up and doing what I need them to do, but I've never thought about using it to rush buy an army.

Interesting. Thank you for pointing that out. I haven't played in the modern era since getting BTS--still trying to find the right difficulty level for me, as well as a map size and settings that let the game go for a good amount of time, yet don't lead to too much computer lag and micromanagement for me. Incidentally, I'm guessing that if you leave Police State, WW goes back up, right?



I don't quite follow you on this. "Food equivalent"? Do you mean "hammer equivalent" with full gold multipliers? Though in that case, you said "early game" so I'm guessing no Kremlin, and then it's not quite hammer equivalent, right?


I don't believe WW increases if you flip out of PS, lose no units, and then flip back in (and resume losing units). When WW is that harsh, I've almost certianly gotten all the other WW reducers online and normally find myself inside US one turn in 10 or less. You can queue load awfully heavily in lesser cities and burn back a huge amount of gold on the front very quickly.

Food equivalent is the idea that for a given amount of food external to the tiles you are considering (when not specified all tiles are assumed to be flat green land); what can you get per turn with food nuetrality. For instance in the above example in order to maintain food equivalency (0 net food for the 3 workers in question) you need two green farms or 3 coastal tiles. A brown hill eats up the 2 food from the farms giving us base 4 :hammers:. 3 coastal fin/col tiles gives us food neutrality and 12 :commerce:. Thus with early US powered production gets a net output of 4 :hammers: off of ubiquitious coastal tiles.

When looking at basic tile efficiency you should always include what you have to work to feed that improvement or what you intend to do with the surplus food (specs, work water tiles, whip out). This why green hills are superior to brown hills, fewer :hammers: on the hill, but more hills to work per farm.

I don't believe WW increases if you flip out of PS, lose no units, and then flip back in (and resume losing units). When WW is that harsh, I've almost certianly gotten all the other WW reducers online and normally find myself inside US one turn in 10 or less. You can queue load awfully heavily in lesser cities and burn back a huge amount of gold on the front very quickly.

ww increases just the same when you're running PS
only the effects are lesser
Thus, as soon as you switch to anything else, you're facing the total WW you have gathered.

Food equivalent is the idea that for a given amount of food external to the tiles you are considering (when not specified all tiles are assumed to be flat green land); what can you get per turn with food nuetrality. [snip] 3 coastal fin/col tiles gives us food neutrality and 12 :commerce:. Thus with early US powered production gets a net output of 4 :hammers: off of ubiquitious coastal tiles.

Okay, thank you for clarifying.

ww incresases just the same when you're running SP
only the effects are lesser
Thus, as soon as you switch to anything else, you're the total WW you have gathered.

That's what I thought (though I think you meant "PS" for Police State ;); "SP" is liable to be mistaken for State Property, which of course doesn't affect WW).