Nationhood vs Slavery ?

Hello,

I'm playing CIV4 for a year now and i'm still discovering new things, like nationhood. I don't understand the difference however between nationhood and slavery. The only difference i see is that slavery can also be used for buildings and that nationhood give some happy faces due to barracks. But for units there seems not to be any difference ? So in a aggressive strategy you'd better go for slavery & vasalage (exp pts) ?

Under slavery, a rifleman costs 3 pop and you get 1 for 10 turns.

Under nationhood, a rifleman costs 1 pop and you get 3 for 10 turns.

Using both is a valid strategy, -4 pop and 4 cancels out nicely.

There are other diferences between drafting and slavery that can be important:

• Drafted units are avaliable in the turn you draft them. Whipped ( slavery ) units only come in next turn.
  
• You can only draft a certain number of units per turn in your whole empire, in cities with more than 10% of your nationality and the city must have 5 citizens after draft for being eligible for it. None of that aplies to slavery.
  
• You can only draft warriors,axemen, macemen, musketmen ,riflemen ( all 1 pop each ), infantry ( 2 pop each ) and mechanized infantry ( 3 pop each ). You can whip everything besides Projects ( Manhathan, Internet .... )
  
• Drafted units have only half of the experience points that a equal non-drafted unit would have if built in the same city.

Drafted units are avaliable in the turn you draft them. Whipped ( slavery ) units only come in next turn.

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But whipped units can defend on the interturn, that's important to remember.

Drafting can be used alongside Caste System and Emancipation while Slavery can not.

Drafting can not be used alongside Bureaucracy and Free Speech while Slavery can.

Those are pretty important to keep in mind, IMO.

Also: the civic that enables Drafting adds 2 happiness to any city with a barracks (one of the cheapest buildings in the game). This means that controlled (non-anger stacking) drafting really only lowers happiness by 1.

To be precise, whipped units appear just after your turn (which means before the AI's turn).

Drafting has one big disadvantage: After using it a few times you'll have cities which is especially bad if you plan to go to war and expect WW.

OTOH drafting is the best Food:Hammer conversion there is, at least when drafting riflemen which is most common (see Snaaty's Strategy guide for higher levels).

Drafting is a powerful tool which can make you get a huge army fast. That you can't use buerocracy anymore isn't such a big deal since you'll likely have a rather big empire after the war and Buerocracy's High Upkeep is rather costly.

Using Whipping and Drafting together is a good idea imo. Once you start running into problems, you can 2pop whip (or 3pop whip) -Buildings, especially Theatres and Coliseums which help you dealing with the . Also whipping newly-captured cities generally is a good idea, especially if they'd starve anyway...

Great point Monsterzuma, that they are in different civic branches. Its also important to remember that the unhappiness doesnt "stack". I mean it does, but not like whipping two turns in a row, where first turn gives you 15 turns of unhappy, and the next turn if you whip, its 29 turns. If you whip and draft a city in the same turn, its only 15 turns of unhappy (at Epic speed). Its 4 unhappy total, but it will only take 15 turns to dissipate.

I often use both at once, with Nationhood, Slavery, and Theocracy being in my "Military Civic" package, then back to Free Speech, maybe Caste or Emanci (although I tend to stay in Slavery til forced out by other AIs running Emanci), and Pacifism for my "peacetime package".

A good technique for this is starting units in a bunch of cities, even commerce cities (if they have a Barracks), then as they get to 1 turn remaining, stick something else in front. When a big pile of cities have a unit 1-turn from completing, I will pop off a saved GPerson for a Golden Age, then switch into the Military civics, and whip/draft a huge army out in only a few turns. You can go from last in Power-rating to well ahead with a good run of drafting and whipping.

@xarthaz: Thing is, whipped cities are just low in pop for some time (until they've regrown) but drafted cities are stifled for much longer (usually) with the rather slowly fading +3

PrivateThomas,

Two more things to consider:

There is a penalty for whipping a unit that has 0 hammers. There are no population -> unit penalties from drafting.

Drafted units come with 1/2 of the experience that a whipped unit would come with.

Remember that building the Globe Theatre in your second highest food city that is not your capital for drafting is also a good idea.

Why not in your highest food city aka GPFarm?

Having a GPFarm drafting 1 unit every turn still lets you maintain most of your specs. You usually don't get to settle 2 decent food cities...

Nationhood has several advantages:

Drafting is huge as you can quickly build up an army of decent fodder. Jans, Oromos, Musketeers, and Redcoats are all ownage to draft. Another fun shot is to run for cannon and draft muskets just to kill guys and hold territory. By and large, drafting is more efficient at quickly churning out large armies than whipping, though both are possible.

Another fun aspect of nationhood is that you get a huge boost to espionage. If you are running an EE, you want this.

Vassalhood is not really that useful. Unless you are CHA, running a mounted war machine with stables, or have the Pentagon you don't need a huge amount of XP out the door, enough for two promos is enough (being 1 point away from a third promo means you get a quick an easy free heal and is worth running). Instead you normally find yourself using Theo for unit XP, and balancing between Nationhood (massive army raising possibilities), B (great for cottage cap), and FS (great for the CE). My personal "all out war economy" is running PS, nationhood, slavery, SP/FM (depending on which is easier to power up), and Theo with an EE economy (mostly spec/GSp driven). You may be slightly behind in tech, but you can spam units out your ears.

Use both together. The end game power civics package I use for Domination with a SE is often : Police State, Nationhood, Slavery, State Property, Theocracy. That gives +35% production bonus for Slavery, add in the Kremlin for another 50% boost and you can produce oodles of troops and ignore the war weariness.

xarthaz said:

Nationhood can save your butt in those oh **** situations(especially with spiritual), while maintaining decent city size, slavery has much more drastic results. Slavery just is not worth it any more at the time when nationhood comes around, troops just cost too much.

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Sorry, this is just not true. Police State, State Property, and a forge gives +60% for troop production (without considering factories and power) and the military bonusses for HE and MA and drydocks all help Slavery and not Nationhood. But the really huge boost is the Kremlin which makes Slavery 50% more effective before the other bonusses apply. Then there is the difference in unit costs on marathon versus normal. On marathon most things are multiplied by a factor of 3, research requires 3 times as many beakers, building cost 3 times as many hammers, slavery gives 3 times the hammers per pop, 3 times as much food is required to grow a city but the big difference is in unit costs which is only 2 times the hammers of normal. For instance a rifleman costs 110 hammers on normal and 220 on marathon, and the cost for drafting is the same 1 pop on both. This makes drafting a lot less desireable on marathon and when all the above factors are taken into account Slavery is very competative.

Here is a worked example for marathon. A drafted rifleman costs 1 pop. A rifleman costs 220 hammers and 1 whipped pop gives a basic 90 hammers on marathon, so without any modifiers it takes 3 pop to give 1 rifleman plus 50 hammers overflow. But that is very misleading since it almost never happens that way if you're geared up for war. The Kremlin increases the basic hammers by 50% to 135. Then we have the basic production modifiers (PS, SP and forge) which increases it by 60% in all cities, that's 135 x 1.6 = 216 hammers (which is almost the same). If we then include HE and a MA we get another +150% for military units or 135 x 3.1 = 418 hammers which is nearly 2 riflemen for 1 pop. In this extreme case Slavery is twice as efficient as drafting

And that is without considering factories or power which I find give too much unhealth to be worthwhile. The Kremlin is essential if you want to use late game Slavery and I've found in my last two games that I head through Scientific Method and straight to Communism not for State Property (excellent though that is) nor for the free GSpy but for the wonder. That gives a +50% boost to my food to hammer conversion rate and is massively empowering for a high food SE. It's arguable that the Kremlin is better for a SE with Slavery than it is for a CE running US.

Nationhood gives +2 happiness with barracks (already mentioned) and also +25% EPs which is useful if you've a big empire with a lot of jails, intelligences agencies, security bureaus and run spy specialists. If you're going for a late game domination then the combination of powerful military production, immunity from war weariness and overwhelming espionage is a strong strategy. The Nationhood and Slavery civics fit very well into that strategy.

mirthadir said:

Vassalhood is not really that useful. Unless you are CHA, running a mounted war machine with stables, or have the Pentagon you don't need a huge amount of XP out the door, enough for two promos is enough (being 1 point away from a third promo means you get a quick an easy free heal and is worth running).

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mirthadir,

In most games I tend to sport a large army, I find the "free support for X units" to be the most useful part about Vassalage, the experience bonus is just gravy.

Kesshi said:

mirthadir,

In most games I tend to sport a large army, I find the "free support for X units" to be the most useful part about Vassalage, the experience bonus is just gravy.

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Free unit support is nice, but it is rare that I don't make more from B or FS. By and large I tend to have very few units actually "in the field" for any length of time; I'm either coast hopping or city hopping. BTW how large is "large"? The free units become a lower percent savings as I get truly large.

I tend to be of the school of thought that if I'm to go balls to the wall war - I just want units. Nat is more effective at giving me more units.

mirthadir said:

Free unit support is nice, but it is rare that I don't make more from B or FS. By and large I tend to have very few units actually "in the field" for any length of time; I'm either coast hopping or city hopping. BTW how large is "large"? The free units become a lower percent savings as I get truly large.

I tend to be of the school of thought that if I'm to go balls to the wall war - I just want units. Nat is more effective at giving me more units.

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mirthadir,

"Large" is enough to destroy the world.

In the PYL VI game I played, I had an army so large even at 0% Science with 3 Holy shrines I was still losing money. Yet I was gaining money from pillaging and taking over cities. Welcome to the Sword Economy.

Seriously, though, my army's power is usually twice that of the 2nd place person. I've taken Montezuma and Shaka head on. I like to play a very militaristic game.

Kesshi said:

mirthadir,

"Large" is enough to destroy the world.

In the PYL VI game I played, I had an army so large even at 0% Science with 3 Holy shrines I was still losing money. Yet I was gaining money from pillaging and taking over cities. Welcome to the Sword Economy.

Seriously, though, my army's power is usually twice that of the 2nd place person. I've taken Montezuma and Shaka head on. I like to play a very militaristic game.

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Umm I skimmed through your post and I didn't see any truly large stacks of guys (though you may have had multiple stacks or been playing a small map). Large stacks of guys, for me, are large enough to win at tech/promo parity or even when I'm behind (i.e. phants and pults vs anything before gunpowder). In those cases, having a really good B cap or plenty of towns makes it cheaper to run B or FS.

mystyfly said:

@xarthaz: Thing is, whipped cities are just low in pop for some time (until they've regrown) but drafted cities are stifled for much longer (usually) with the rather slowly fading +3

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You should have barracks built in those cities tho, which gives you 2

mirthadir said:

Umm I skimmed through your post and I didn't see any truly large stacks of guys (though you may have had multiple stacks or been playing a small map). Large stacks of guys, for me, are large enough to win at tech/promo parity or even when I'm behind (i.e. phants and pults vs anything before gunpowder). In those cases, having a really good B cap or plenty of towns makes it cheaper to run B or FS.

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He was playing at noble and split his stacks many ways. On marathon. This is hardly something you'd encounter in a normal game.

I find nationhood much stronger in a large empire where you can cycle the drafting so that you don't staff anger, but can still draft away every turn. Globe helps with that obviously...although I find globe costs a stifling amount of hammers to put in a city that used to be a GP farm honestly...but it still helps if I remember to get it.

What kind of bothers me when comparing whipping and drafting cycles to pure hammers is that you cannot continually whip cities forever, especially larger ones...the anger will stack and ruin you. Going past that, if you're playing faster than epic cities specialized for hammers are making a unit every single turn or very close in many cases (hell, the heroic epic example earlier in a strong hammer city would put out a unit/turn on epic even...) - why would you whip in these cities? How much whip anger are you willing to stack? And for using rifles? Are you seriously going to wait for communism and biology to wage war with rifles, or are you talking about whipping infantry or even tanks? The latter makes more sense, if you've taken the time to just set up tons of food cities everywhere, of course with the assumption that you can do so.

Drafting does have the benefit of just getting a massive army REALLY FAST, and there's something to be said for that...however just rifles on their own don't cut it. I never saw a HUGE hike in success between doing this vs say, spamming maces and using a GM to upgrade rifles to CR, just building rifles (or cavalry or cannon for that matter), etc etc.

A truly fast war requires spies or siege to lower D...or the losses are too heavy, even against longbows.

mirthadir said:

Umm I skimmed through your post and I didn't see any truly large stacks of guys (though you may have had multiple stacks or been playing a small map). Large stacks of guys, for me, are large enough to win at tech/promo parity or even when I'm behind (i.e. phants and pults vs anything before gunpowder). In those cases, having a really good B cap or plenty of towns makes it cheaper to run B or FS.

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mirthadir,

My stacks weren't always individually huge, but my army sure was. I would take over a city, and stick the injured in the city to rest while I moved my other units forward. I lost more units that way, but with how quickly I was producing more Macemen I didn't care because I was going for a pre 1000AD Domination win.



It was bankrupting me!



If you look behind the mouseover you can see that my income is 596 at 100% gold, and my expenses are 586, with zero support for "away" units. And the only reason the units weren't "away" anymore was because I captured many new citeis a few turns prior.

*note* This is while running Vassalage.