ALC Game #5: England/Victoria

pigswill said:

If you got the cash and the coppermine what about upgrading the Woody Brothers to axes before they trespass on Monte?

Click to expand...

That's a ways off yet, as the copper has to be mined and the cities connected. If the agression is paced more slowly, I think you are right, though.

The cities don't need to be connected. The Woodys can go to York.

Yeah, but I've only got 20 gold, so it's kind of a moot point.

The next two cities are high priority, yes.

More later...

pigswill said:

The cities don't need to be connected. The Woodys can go to York.

Click to expand...

Far out. Good call.

.. should be about 85 for each of them... but Wood Axes, would be actually undislodgable. (Jags can take out Wood Warriors)

also to simplify the whipping, a key point of the whip is whether or not you have anything in the production box when you whip.

If you don't its more expensive, However, Axes are interesting in that they just Barely cost two population units as is, so the "nothing in the box/first turn" penalty isn't enough to move the cost from 2 to 3.

And you actually Want high population used /whip (as long as you also get high prod/whip) because Happiness is your limitation.

I just recently learned of whipping strategy, so i will try and explain it from a new person who doesnt whip often's point of view...

First off, forget how much population you lose per whip, happiness, all those details... just forget it. All you need to remember that WHIPPING GIVES YOU 30 HAMMERS.(This is all assuming we dont ahve a production bonus like forges)

Since you get thirty hammers per whip, you put it frist in the line, and look at how many hammers total it needs to be completed.

Then, decide how much population you have/willing to spend on the unit/building/wonder

transfer this into hammers = 1 pop = 30 hammers

then, wait until you have that or less than that left in the production line for hammers ( you can check this by hovering mouse over production bar in city screen), and when it comes, WHIP DEM PAGANS!

I eventually got the hang of how many turns i had to go before i could whip "x", but at first doing this is the safest way, and you have all the time in the world, its SP

I'd say that Drama and Music are only diversions on the path to Rifling. I've found that any leader will declare war if you have enough techs that they want and they don't want to make a fair trade for them...

Round 3: to 1320 BC (Part One)

First, the summary, then the next post will provide fodder for discussing my whip-handling skills (or lack thereof).

To start off, it's always nice to know there's someone more pathetic than I am:



Of course, this is before I built any Axes. I should check the power rating when I have a few. Yes, the worker got built, mined the copper, and chop-rushed a barracks for York, which is now my military centre.

And, I built my third city, down near the silk, wheat, and pigs:



Yeah, I guess "Pig's Ear" had a certain visceral appeal, but it sounds more like the name of an English pub than an English city, so Nottingham it is. This city will take over producing Workers and Settlers until London is done wonder-building.

Speaking of which. I used a semi-exploit I'm well-versed in--chopping--to hurry my first Wonder:



Like I said, I'd rather whip/chop Axemen than Obelisks. The few times I haven't built Stonehenge and have not been a Creative civ, I find Obelisks are a terrible diversion of your early production. So yes, I find Stonehenge extremely worthwhile, and the Great Prophet points are a very handy bonus.

For the anti-building squad, hey, at least I'm not going after the Pyramids this time.

Right after Stonehenge finished, I started on the Oracle. I'll help it along with a chop, maybe two. If I manage to finish the race to build it, Metal Casting will be the chosen tech; in the meantime, I'm researching Code of Laws the old-fashioned way.

Now, remember how there was a near-spoiler a while back regarding how difficult it would have been to steal a worker from Monty? I'm beginning to see why:



That has gotta be the oddest location for a capital I've seen. Tenochtitlan must be one tile south of the wooded grassland tile you can just make out in the fog. It looks like it's sitting on a one-tile-wide isthmus.

And here poor Monty doesn't start with fishing.

And here's a look at the map. I turned the resource display off to keep it from getting too cluttered.



I have one of my Woodsman II Warriors ensconced on that desert hill NE of Monty's capital. The other one, having pretty much exposed as much fog as he could down south, is making his way north to reveal the last few tiles up there. Let's hope for a seafood resource or two for a worthwhile city later on.

Now, let's talk about whipping, shall we?

Yeah, the only tech tree diversions for a Cultural win are
Drama, Music,and possibly religions... if you get Confucianism and Taoism (both close to the Rifle beeline) (and take the Spanish and Aztecs) then you have 4 religions. So diverting to The Western religions is unnecessary (and Washington a Financial civ, might do it himself... or Isabella before you kill her)

Actually Rifle Beeline works very well with cultural as they can be your 'holder unit' when you switch culture off.


As for Whipping...of Axemen... in a High food city do it 2 Axemen at a time without Any production in them to begin with.

In a low food city just do it every time you can, and continuously produce the Axemen. (for York probably every time it reaches 3 pop whip it down to Two)

When you get forges, then it gets more interesting, Then the best time to whip an Axe is when it is Just started (1-4 production In the box... which means the first turn of production of the Axe has to be 1-3... four whould get changed into 5)

That allows you to whip the axe for 1 Population and get 60 hammers (finish that Axe and Most of another.)


With bonuses the basic key is
Population Cost is determined by the bonuses
BUT
The number of hammers you get is Always a multiple of 30 (it basically adds blocks of 30 H directly to the box without bonuses until it is full... or overfull)

Round 3: to 1320 BC (Part Two)

Okay. Let's see some examples of my yeilding the whip in this game--or, to put it more clearly, sacrificing population in my cities, under the Slavery civic, in order to complete production more quickly.

Slavery in Action Example: Rushing a Granary in London

So here's London in 1880 BC:



I just finished building a Settler, and now I want to build a Granary. Remember that Granaries preserve 50% of your city's food supply after the population grows (normally, 100% of the supply is consumed by pop growth). Basically, having one in a city means it grows faster, because you produce less food than you normally would in order to grow. This is ideal for sacrificing population to production, because it accelerates how quickly you get more lambs for the slaughter. Also, Granaries are 50% off to a leader with the Expansive trait, so it won't cost as much population to build one as it would another civ.

The city screen indicates that the Granary will take 11 turns to build at my current production levels, which is actually, as you'll see, 4 hammers per turn, not 20. This is the first thing that confuses me. Why does it say 20? Is that overflow from the previous build? If so, shouldn't that just show up as points within the production progress bar? Strange.

All right, setting that aside for a moment, to efficiently use the whip, you have to have some hammers already contributed towards the build, which I don't. So I go to the next turn, then come back to the city screen:





Okay, more confusion, first off--it now says I have 4 hammers per turn, though I only count two from the city's tiles. And I see I have 20 hammers towards the build, but I'll only get 4 on the next turn. Like I said, I guess the 20 hammers are overflow from the previous build, but this is a strange and confusing way for them to show up.

Also, if 1 pop supposedly yeilds 30 hammers, shouldn't it take 2 pop to finish the Granary, which still needs 40? Or is this the rounding error that Zombie69 refers to in his article? Quite an expliot, I'm surprised the 1.61 patch didn't fix it.

Setting all that aside for the moment, long story short, I can see that instead of 2 population, finishing the Granary on the next turn will only take 1. I elect to do that.



So now we see that the Granary will complete in a total of two turns instead of 11. And I have a bonus, an overflow of 20 hammers that will, it appears, be contributed towards the next build. Do I have to have something in the queue to take advantage of that?

On the next turn, I have my Granary, and a few ticked citizens:



Yeah, okay, I'm a jerk. Now get to work on Stonehenge. Bloody peasants...

Now, how did I do here? Am I using the whip as effectively as possible? I whipped a granary in York in the same manner, but I haven't done one in Nottingham yet, though I could on the next turn. If there's a better way of doing it, however, I'm all ears.

Later, when York's population grows again, I'll try whipping an Axeman and post the results so we can dissect that.

Finally, combining whipping, Granaries, and Wonder-building presents a wee problem:



As you can see, London is at its happiness limit. Its population will grow beyond it in two turns. Whipping the Oracle, however, would cost a whopping 9 population--not an option. Now, I can live with an unhappy citizen in a size 6 city, but I'd rather not. I could wait a few turns for the whipping happiness penalty to wear off (and maybe stagnate its growth by changing tile assignments until it does); I could put a cheaper item in the build queue; or I could live with the unhappiness until I have enough hammers collected to whip the remaining ones and finish the Oracle that way. Which plan makes the most sense? Is there another option I'm missing? And did I screw up my whipping earlier, and this is how I'm paying for it?

To make a general comment about this, I also find that micro-management is important to use Slavery like this. I needed to check each city screen on each turn; otherwise I'd forget that I started a whip-worthy build on the previous turn that could be completed on the present one.

I look forward to your responses. Like most players, I suspect, in the past I've just used the whip when it was convenient, but without much consideration. It's definitely one more area of my game that could use some improvement.

Had a look at the save. In London you could work wine instead of cows:adds 1 to oracle build time,removes 4 from CoL research time. I presume workers are going to be occupied with road building next, after that cottaging the floody suburbs of London might be an idea because once you've got oracle built (?whipped) might be worth thinking about a library (?whipped).
Where are the barbarians? Should be thousands of them arriving soon attracted by the bright lights of the big city.
Speaking of cities Monte's Indigo City looks like it has long term potential (may even become legendary). Also speaking of cities who provides the settler for floodplains central (another potential legend). Where does GL get built? Long term questions that are worth considering early.

The reason it showed 4 hammers/turn for granary is that the way half-price buildings work is you get double hammers/turn to produce (it still officially costs 60 hammers).

Pigswill has it right, of course.



If you hover the mouse over the white box, you'll see Base Production (number of hammers on tiles plus number of hammers from specialists, plus overflow), then all the multipliers.

It doesn't "just show up as points in the progress bar" because you haven't committed those hammers until you hit End Turn. Slave rushed, Cash rushed, and Chop Rushed production is applied to whatever is in the queue when you rush. But production, and overflow, are applied only to whatever is at the top of the queue during the doProduction phase (which occurs between your turn and the next player's turn.

Yes, thats true. The 20 hammers are overflow from he prevoius build. They are shown there, because they will be contributed towards the next item on the next turn. And the 4 hammers per turn are because you have bonus building granaries as beeing expansive.

OK, some notes on the whip.

Disclaimer: I'm not going to attempt to address the exploit that had everyone abuzz in the micromanagement article. Let's just pretend that the whip has been patched, so that it works correctly?

First note: The production bonuses in play at the time you hit the whip button are applied to the hammers you get from whipping. So a spiritual civ sitting in Police State can whip a military build (getting the 25% bonus), then revolt to a new government including OrgReligion, whip a building (a different 25% bonus), then finish each build on the next two turns.

Second note: whipping a unit with no hammers invested suffers a penalty, as does buy rushing. So if your intention (again, thinking Spiritual Civ here) is to spend only a few turns in Slavery, but you want to whip as many buildings as you can, you need to put a few hammers into each before you start.

The happiness penalty from using the whip stacks (if you whip two units in one turn, you have a +2 unhappy penalty). The duration of the penalty is where things get tricky - the penalty for a single whip goes away n turns after the penalties for all previous whips have expired.

(So if you whip two units on the same turn (normal speed), you'll be looking at +2 unhappy for 10 turns, followed by +1 unhappy for 10 turns.

The amount of penalty is constant - you get one unhappy each time you click the button. So Whipping two pop points is a better deal than whipping one; the second is "free", as far as unhappy is concerned, and the second point grows back faster, so you are getting a better deal in hammers per food.

Now, the production bonuses apply, so whipping your bonus building is half cost, just like building it by hand would be. So the cheap traits buildings frequently cost only one pop point (once you've put in your first hammer). You may be better off whipping something else (an Axe, for example), and applying the overflow to the bonus building.

One clear exception to that is the Granary for an expansive civ. It's the first building you want to have when you are whipping, so getting it up immediately is a clear win.

Whipping bigger things (like wonders) is a pain. So you work your way up to it, whipping out units with lots of overflow, and applying the overflow to your target build. Axes are a good start, later on disposalpults are a good choice.

When to Pop Rush?

(This is one way to get the National Epic built in Foodville. Or the Globe Theater into your GT/HE food megaplex).

The micropart is the timing. For maximum return, you always want to be whipping half of your population every 10 turns. (You can ignore the 10 turn rule when whipping something that gives you happy bonuses - temples, forges when you have luxury metals, etc).

Nice stuff about the whipping. Again learning new stuff over here. I am although wondering about why nobody in the dot map decided to take a look at the triple C city (1 SW of the crab in the northern right corner). It has copper, crab, cow and marble. The last one is definitely necessary if you want to go for a cultural victory (cheap cathedrals with the planned 4 holy cities and cheaper wonders). I understand this is of some later importance but it is a very good site indeed. First take out your opponents but then that city has to become a priority too.

about london, how much turns left before the last whip's effect is gone?

you can abosrb a lot of unhappies because of high food, and so whip at least 2 pops.
Yet my guess would be to stay focused on the oracle AND the commerce to get "the right tech" from it.
SO :
- You should start building cottages on those flood plains (growing slower but researching faster!)
- You should whip a 0 hammer axeman as soon as the whipping effect exhausts = 1 axeman + 25 hammers overflow, then working your cottages will let your floodplains cottages, cow and wheat grows you back 2 pop in the 10 turns (thank you granary and high food).
=> 25 "free" hammers on the Oracle every 10 turns. It's not a lot, but the axeman can be useful, don't you think?

The rhythm method, with pictures. Again, please note that this is a illustration of the general principles, not a recipe for micromanaged perfection.



Here's our city. Very close to the happy limit, lots of food in the tank. The granary has already been built, for optimal whips. Because I'm intending to convert food to hammers, I'm working cottage tiles, rather than mines.

A single hammer is all I need to deal with the production penalty for rushing a new unit, therefore there's no need to work any production tiles.



And here we are, ready to whip two population. Hit it.



Same turn, after whipping the Axe. Notice that, because of the food in the bin, and the fact the population is now lower, we are already to grow on the next turn. You can't grow more than one pop point per turn, but overflow does work, so I should really have those two pop points on the corn. This configuration puts me at size four a turn late. Shrug.



Continuing to grow. The goal is to grow up to working population size (ie max happy) as quickly as possible, then micromanage the food toward the target level.



The overflow, and the hammers, go into a Barracks. I had considered using another axeman for the illustration. You get about 27 hammers of overflow and about 9 hammers of production between pops, which is just about another Axe, but it looks like magic. Instead, let's just put the hammers into a bag. In fact, I ended up with 42 hammers in the barracks.

So to explain this picture - I've picked my target food level (25 in the bin when I pop). I'm at +2 food per turn when I put one hammer into an Axe, so I stopped my growth at 23, by switching a couple pop points to the hills (exchanging a food for a hammer). If you work out the math, it might be better to grow so that the unhappy person appears just as you are about to whip him away.


The slavometer tells me I have one turn to go. So I load up a new Axeman, put myself back on +2 growth. (If you are intending to whip away the unhappy person, and trying to micromanage the timing perfectly, then you would be on the happiness limit, with no unhappy people, but the foodbar announcing growth in 1 turn, at this point).

Not the uncanny resemblance between this shot and the first picture in the series.



And this picture looks a lot like the second. The whip penalty just now expired (compare happy and unhappy), and we've put in our one turn on the Axe, so we are ready to whip again.

The net result is that, at a cost of 27 food and few turns on the cottages, we've gotten 60 hammers in exchange. (Without the granary already in place, the yield would have cost 54 food, rather than 27, and consequently more turns missing on the cottages too).

The bug makes micromanagement of pop rushing necessary. If you do MM, you get more than you should (90 instead of 75 with a forge for 2 people), but if you don't you get less (60 instead of 75 with a forge for 2 people).

You don't want to be screwed, do you?

The point is to be just over a multiple of 30 but under 30*bonus.
Meaning, with a forge and no other bonus, you want to pop rush for 2 pop (better than 1 pop, since you have less unhappiness afterwards than before)
between 61 and 75 hammers left. If it's not the right moment to rush (still some turns before the 10 turns limit), you just switch production to something else. A wonder, for instance

Until you have forges, or OrgRel or Police State, there is no bug : 100% bonus doesn't result in positive rounding errors, AFAIK, but watch out that you don't lose 30 hammers somewhere (for instance 2 pops with 100% bonus should net you 120 hammers. If you only needed something between 61 and 90, you only get 90 = 30 hammers vanished!)

As you can see, London is at its happiness limit. Its population will grow beyond it in two turns. Whipping the Oracle, however, would cost a whopping 9 population--not an option. Now, I can live with an unhappy citizen in a size 6 city, but I'd rather not. I could wait a few turns for the whipping happiness penalty to wear off (and maybe stagnate its growth by changing tile assignments until it does); I could put a cheaper item in the build queue; or I could live with the unhappiness until I have enough hammers collected to whip the remaining ones and finish the Oracle that way. Which plan makes the most sense? Is there another option I'm missing? And did I screw up my whipping earlier, and this is how I'm paying for it?

To make a general comment about this, I also find that micro-management is important to use Slavery like this. I needed to check each city screen on each turn; otherwise I'd forget that I started a whip-worthy build on the previous turn that could be completed on the present one.

I look forward to your responses. Like most players, I suspect, in the past I've just used the whip when it was convenient, but without much consideration. It's definitely one more area of my game that could use some improvement.

Click to expand...

Well, the previous posters have gone into depth with screenshots, so i won't go into too much detail with that. I, however, would call attention to a GREAT way to finish units AND buildings simultaniously. Before you read this, take anohter quick look at screenie's 4 and 5 of VoiceofUnreason's post. He puts the overflow into a barracks! Now, how is that important? Well, think about it this way. Instead of going conventional and whipping for an extra axemen(as he so well stated, the overflow is just enough to get a FREE axemen(well not free, but costing food)), say you have a big project to do...

Getting my drift here? A big project to do... like the Oracle? So wait until you hit max pop via happy(and preferably with one turn left on the food line, but i dont think in this case it matters, ask a MM specialist), then whip some axemen! put the oveflow into the Oracle, and wait until the unhappines goes back to normal. Not only will you finish the oracle faster, you also get a couple much-needed units!