Panda_Power
Warlord
Thanks for your answers, it's a great help!
1) Are Great Prophets better for food bonuses or are any GPs OK?
2) How do you balance between selling food and holding onto food for population growth?
[Guide] Resource Gathering (beta)
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Thanks for your answers, it's a great help!
1) Are Great Prophets better for food bonuses or are any GPs OK?
2) How do you balance between selling food and holding onto food for population growth?
I don't want to thread jack, but what I do is I keep a good eye on the market to see what's going. I'm at 15, but I think the second biggest city is 10 or 11. Also, I've been ahead in the cash game for a long long time, like, I was at 15k when everybody was at 1k or so. I won two early "convert 20% of gold to shields", the second one gave me about 10k shields, so I never needed buying shields, and I have ginormous granaries everywhere. In short, I never needed money -- so I sell when I feel the price is high enough, regardless of growth. And when the prices is low, I buy food back. This might vary game to game, but for this current game, I was able to keep food at a consistent 400$ early on, and if anybody mass sells, I buy them all up to 400$.
I pop a citizen when/if I have enough harvests that after popping I have ~10 harvests left. This way, if someone wants to grow their city and buys their food in a bundle and drives the price up to say, 900, I can immediately harvests a few times and bring home the cash.
The trickle probably adds to the math (I didn't realize there was a trickle until I visited this forum, which was after I had my strategy anyways) but the additional guy, unless you have tons of great prophet in the beginning is not dramatic.
The key thing I do is that I have way more than enough money to run out this scheme, because I can be fluid -- I can buy all that I want when it's cheap, and I can sell all that I want when it's expensive.
Alright, it got a bit wordy, I guess the
tl;dr is my current strategy involves buying food when it's cheap, and selling food when it's expensive. I pop when popping still allows me to buy food when it's cheap, and sell food when it's expensive.
Edit: I missed your first question. Only Great Prophets is for food. I really keep buying them, and maybe only used one or two for wonders. I also buy other GPs when they're cheap and sell them when I make a little more than break even, and sometimes use a few to build wonders. I didn't know about the trickle though, so right now I just buy other GPs when they're cheap and working out the math. (The math for me is much better for farming because I work the math into the harvest)
Panda_Power
Warlord
That's really helpful insight, thanks for sharing!
Any thoughts on writing up your own guide?
Any thoughts on writing up your own guide?
That's really helpful insight, thanks for sharing!
Any thoughts on writing up your own guide?
This is my first game, so I don't want to generalize what might be a series of coincidence that happened to be in my favor.
Also I might not play after this game, hahaha, it's really eating up my time.. I don't think I can be a check twice a day type of player.
I experimented with optimal food production mainly by trial and error (and 12,000 shields!), which I could've saved a bit if I had read this guide, so it was a great guide!
The other stuff is just patience (if the market is irrational, either wait for it to be rational, or take advantage of it and make it rational) and persistence (I'm on all the time, so whenever the market becomes irrational I can take advantage of it). I guess I'm the guy that picks up all the pennies players drop in the game! Also, always just do the math. The 20% gold to shield thing propelled me greatly though. I was a bit ahead in gold, and since shields were trading at 5 to 1, I basically bid more than the second place, and converted a bit of the shields back to cash. So essentially, free shields.
I don't know if I have strategy other than that, really. I don't know if I can replicate it.
punctuator
Ginger Snap
Two things in response to the last few posts:
1) I have a lot of % multipliers to get my productivity that high (I think right now 55 is my highest farmer productivity): 25% from Stonehenge, 25% from Magna Carta, 25% from Universal Healthcare, and 100% from 20 Great Prophets. The key to high productivity is multipliers, and specifically stacking Great People. Otherwise you'll never get above the 20-30 range.
2) I don't really know how the doubling up after 16 pop works yet! This is still my first game I'm playing, and I'm at 16 pop right now. So I recognize that this is a lacuna in my guide, but I don't have the relevant information to fill it, yet.
Actually, maybe if I log in it will be 17....
1) I have a lot of % multipliers to get my productivity that high (I think right now 55 is my highest farmer productivity): 25% from Stonehenge, 25% from Magna Carta, 25% from Universal Healthcare, and 100% from 20 Great Prophets. The key to high productivity is multipliers, and specifically stacking Great People. Otherwise you'll never get above the 20-30 range.
2) I don't really know how the doubling up after 16 pop works yet! This is still my first game I'm playing, and I'm at 16 pop right now. So I recognize that this is a lacuna in my guide, but I don't have the relevant information to fill it, yet.
Actually, maybe if I log in it will be 17....
I found this on the wiki (it's as reliable as you want to grade it):
The number of citizens a player can have in their city is limited to a maximum of thirty-two. However, a player may only have a maximum of sixteen Houses for their citizens to live and work in. After the sixteenth citizen is placed in a house, new citizens will begin "doubling up" with existing citizens.
When a citizen is doubled up, their House will become a Townhouse and will contain two citizens. Both citizens will act like one citizen -- they will perform the same job and use the same resource field or benefit building where applicable. However, the efficiency of the House will effectively be doubled, representing the two citizens living there.
Doubling up starts with the first citizen to be housed and continues in the order in which citizens joined the city.
Since my highest farmer is 61 and the worst is 34 (my 16th is probably ~40) this seems like it would be a nice boost for a few..
zbgayumn
Emperor
I haven't actually hit that milestone yet, but it seems like the best thing to do would be to make your doubled-up citizens into scientists/artists and put them in the best spot next to your village green/benefit building.
Since you're already there, can you tell me how doubling up works with farmers and/or workers? It seems like it would be a disaster. Especially for farmers with one Orchard.
I notice your orchards are only adjacent to two water tiles. Can you say whether or not this is better than lets say three water tiles but only one happiness boost?
This is a great guide.
I don't see a lot of talk about setting up mills and forges. There's a good chance you can get an optimal Mill set up early in any game. All you need is a 3x3 grid with the following layout:
HFH
FMF
HFH
Each worker is going to be automatically Ecstatic with a forest and house next door and all four have the shortest possible route. You also have 2 shots with each worker in the adjacent spaces for extra productivity with water or forests.
A slightly worse set up is:
HHF
FMF
FHH
There are 4 different variations of this one, but the bottom and top middle workers only have one extra space for water/forest to generate extra productivity. It is also slightly worse sometimes because it might require both pairs of houses on a side to be there to get to ecstatic. The first config always gives an ecstatic worker no matter if you have 1, 2, 3, or 4 a that spot.
These setups work for forges as well, but it is obviously more rare to get 4 iron in these exact configurations.
As noted on page three of this thread, extra bonuses do help production beyond just getting to ecstatic.
I know these are not hard to figure out but once you know the pattern of forests/iron/stone to look for it makes it easy to spot a great spot vs. having to move around your mills/houses a bunch of times and wasting time.
BTW, in my game, there were a lot of opportunities for me to pick up great builders. I have 9 Great Builders and only 3 Great Prophets. with 11 population most of my workers are producing about 34 Hammers each. I have a couple on Food at about 25 each. At one point relatively early i was able to sell some production/food at about 900 gold each to buy a few great builders at about 2,500 each so it pushed me in this direction.
I don't see a lot of talk about setting up mills and forges. There's a good chance you can get an optimal Mill set up early in any game. All you need is a 3x3 grid with the following layout:
HFH
FMF
HFH
Each worker is going to be automatically Ecstatic with a forest and house next door and all four have the shortest possible route. You also have 2 shots with each worker in the adjacent spaces for extra productivity with water or forests.
A slightly worse set up is:
HHF
FMF
FHH
There are 4 different variations of this one, but the bottom and top middle workers only have one extra space for water/forest to generate extra productivity. It is also slightly worse sometimes because it might require both pairs of houses on a side to be there to get to ecstatic. The first config always gives an ecstatic worker no matter if you have 1, 2, 3, or 4 a that spot.
These setups work for forges as well, but it is obviously more rare to get 4 iron in these exact configurations.
As noted on page three of this thread, extra bonuses do help production beyond just getting to ecstatic.
I know these are not hard to figure out but once you know the pattern of forests/iron/stone to look for it makes it easy to spot a great spot vs. having to move around your mills/houses a bunch of times and wasting time.
BTW, in my game, there were a lot of opportunities for me to pick up great builders. I have 9 Great Builders and only 3 Great Prophets. with 11 population most of my workers are producing about 34 Hammers each. I have a couple on Food at about 25 each. At one point relatively early i was able to sell some production/food at about 900 gold each to buy a few great builders at about 2,500 each so it pushed me in this direction.
I'm actually at 16, but what do you mean? Do you mean changing your citizen one? For that I just removed all the houses and rebuilt them in the "optimal" order, so that my 1st citizen is the biggest food contributor.
My interpretation of "doubling up" is just 2x the production. I'll update as soon as I get to 17.
But ya, I've been stockpiling hammers, I will make the switch to tech at some point (it's hard to control the other medals for a promotion). But in my game research it really cheap at 200$ while food is still at 500$, and I'm at +185% food, vs only +55% research, so I'm better off buying research for quite a little bit more.
zbgayumn
Emperor
I think this effectively addresses my concern. I was worried that a 'townhouse' working a single resource would be equivalent to citizens from different houses working the same resource, i.e. huge drop in productivity for one of them. The guide seems to say that they'll just take whatever your citizen's productivity number was before and double it.
punctuator
Ginger Snap
I don't think so, no. I have 2 Orchards set up with three adjacent water tiles, though they're all on Plains rather than Grassland, and if I recall they're higher productivity--though I also don't remember corresponding Happiness levels (not in game at the moment). I didn't get very lucky with terrain for Orchards, is the only reason I have so many 30 fruit Orchards.
As I note in the guide, my 45 meat Pasture is more productive than a 30 fruit Orchard, even though the Orchard farmer is adjacent and has +1 relative Happiness. Generally it seems to me Resource Value is the weightiest factor in the productivity calculation.
punctuator
Ginger Snap
I saw a screenshot of a setup like this on the official forums in which the citizen resource selection algorithm was failing to maximize productivity in the way you'd expect it to, so possibly this won't be quite as efficient as you expect.
I think you should add a paragraph about dowries. Once you have maxed your producers, that's a steady stream of income, because everybody marries you! I think a lot of players don't really know about that feature.
Would be icing on a nice cake!
Would be icing on a nice cake!
Creepy Old Man
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2010
- Messages
- 295
By the way - if you build a house right next to unexplored land, you do gain the happiness bonus from any water/forest that may be there but not visible. (I checked.)
punctuator
Ginger Snap
Good call on the Dowries, I should have had a section on that anyway. Added.
punctuator
Ginger Snap
Just got to Pop 17. I can confirm that what happened is the 1st citizen (the one in the bottom right corner of the citizen cards list) simply doubled in productivity, from 55 to 110 (the house looks different too).
