Does using Slavery hurt my game?

Let me start off by saying I'm totally convinced that Slavery is pretty much a foregone conclusion in most of my games. It's that good of a civic.

Anyway, was thinking about the AI and what it doesn't necessarily do so well, and comparing to the things that the AI does do well. Slavery is in the former list while tech research / progress is in the latter.

Is there a connection, I wondered. Take an example: rushing a Library using 2 pop, in a CE. Say the city would take 20 turns to otherwise finish the Library. That's 20 turns at 25% more research. Say the city is producing 20 beakers, that's 5 more per turn = 100 total you gain by having the Library early. We also gain by having the city able to start work using its limited hammers to produce the next building in the queue. This is minor IMO.

Meanwhile, the city needs say 10 turns to regrow the first, 25 for the second. So, we lose cottages/hamlets/villages worked, say an average of 3 commerce = 30 + 75 = 105 total. But we also lose town maturation, because those two towns are respectively 10 and 25 turns behind; let's approximate this by 1 less commerce for 35 turns. So, total 140 lost commerce.

Comparing 100 gained to 140 lost, that's almost a 2:3 ratio. We lose 40% of our research by using Slavery. Furthermore, we lose out on the opportunity to use, say, Serfdom. (IMO a lot of people underestimate Serfdom as a good early civic.)

I'm sure there are other things I'm missing, but I wanted to see if anyone agrees there is something to this idea.

Wodan

Wodan said:

I wondered. Take an example: rushing a Library using 2 pop, in a CE. Say the city would take 20 turns to otherwise finish the Library. That's 20 turns at 25% more research. Say the city is producing 20 beakers, that's 5 more per turn = 100 total you gain by having the Library early. We also gain by having the city able to start work using its limited hammers to produce the next building in the queue. This is minor IMO.

Meanwhile, the city needs say 10 turns to regrow the first, 25 for the second. So, we lose cottages/hamlets/villages worked, say an average of 3 commerce = 30 + 75 = 105 total. But we also lose town maturation, because those two towns are respectively 10 and 25 turns behind; let's approximate this by 1 less commerce for 35 turns. So, total 140 lost commerce.

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I think there could be something to it, but I find it difficult to believe these numbers are adding up.

25 turns to grow back the second pop point? At +1 food, that suggests we are at size 2 or 3 (too small to for the pop rush). At +2 food per turn, that suggest we rushed at size 15? If our size 15 is pulling 20 beakers per turn, what's our commerce slider doing?

And we haven't introduced the possibility of a granary yet.

This doesn't sound like any of my cities. Maybe I haven't lived.

Your results are skewed by a very low re-growth rate. Slavery is not really suited to a low growth situation. To regrow 1 pop in 25 turns is absurdly slow. That implies a size 15 city with a food surplus of 1.

A more realistic city that would be building a library is say size 6 and has a food surplus of 4. So after whipping away 2 pop it can regrow from size 4 to size 5 (needs 14 food with granary) in 4 turns with 2 food carried over, and then to size 6 in another 4 turns... The payoff from Slavery is now much improved since only 8 turns were lost from the last cottage as opposed to the 35 you cite. Slavery needs a good food surplus in the city to be effective.

Add to that the fact that if you play a higher level game your happy limit might still only be 4-6, meaning that the two pop that you slaved away might already have been unhappy and working no tiles. In that case, the problem would be that the 10 turns (at normal speed) with an extra unhappy person puts your happy limit -1 from where it was, meaning you only work one fewer tile for ten turns.

My $0.02,
SR

Yes. Unhappy pop is the best to whip away in most circumstances. Unless I'm desperate, I wouldn't whip a perfectly happy city, or one that can't regrow quickly, for that matter.

The 25 turns is start to finish for the 2nd pop. I said only 10 turns to regrow the 1st pop.

As for whipping away unhappy pop, I don't buy it. The whipping action makes another unhappy, which means if you were at size 5 with 1 unhappy, you're now at size 4 with 1 unhappy.

Wodan

Wodan said:

As for whipping away unhappy pop, I don't buy it. The whipping action makes another unhappy, which means if you were at size 5 with 1 unhappy, you're now at size 4 with 1 unhappy.

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That's if you whip only 1 pop away. If you're at size 5 with 1 unhappy, whip away two pop and you get size 3 all happy. Then work high food tiles till the city is one turn from growing so that 10 turns after whipping you can immediately grow back to size 4 all happy.

That's what I do.

aelf said:

That's if you whip only 1 pop away. If you're at size 5 with 1 unhappy, whip away two pop and you get size 3 all happy. Then work high food tiles till the city is one turn from growing so that 10 turns after whipping you can immediately grow back to size 4 all happy.

That's what I do.

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Sure, I do that too. As I said at the start of myoriginal post, I'm convinced Slavery is the best thing since sliced bread. The question is whether that's a real benefit, or whether there are "hidden" downsides that we aren't giving full consideration.

As for your whip 2 city example above, you're saying you're size 5 and working 4 cottages/hamlets/villages, then you whip down to 3 and work NO cottages for 10 turns. So, that's say an average of 3*4*10 = 120 commerce lost right there.

Any comment on my note about 25 turns to regrow the 2nd pop, from you aelf, or anyone?

Wodan

Wodan said:

Any comment on my note about 25 turns to regrow the 2nd pop, from you aelf, or anyone?

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Needless to say that wouldn't happen in the example of a size 3-5 city. Maybe if you are facing a severe unhealthiness problem. Or if the city is surrounded by jungle or useless tiles. But why would you build such a city or whip in it, in the first place?

I think you have to lay down precise assumptions about terrain, improvements and happiness/health to your calculations in order for them to make some sense. Why not make a different set with very exact conditions? Maybe post a few screenshots too? Or am I asking for too much?

My strategy for whipping typically revolves around high food cities. These cities will be working farms and/or pastures, workboats, etc. And typically not cottages.

If I start on a cottage city (and I typically do early on)...I typically won't whip the cottage squares, or I'll reassign laborers to continue to produce on the cottage squares after whipping.

Remember, slavery only hurts your commerce income if you whip people working on commerce squares. You can do what I do and keep those people off mine or high production squares after you have the library, and keep working the cottage squares (and have a production city somewhere else).

Okay, let's give it a shot. Here are two pics, one of a 5pop city with no library. It has about 16 raw commerce coming in from working 4 villages.

The second is a 3pop city with library. It has 0 commerce coming in, working 3 cows. 3 cows should address concerns voiced above, about "low growth" cities.

Note: in my post above, I forgot about unhappy due to overcrowding. When you whip, the overcrowd penalty goes down, which balances out with the whip penalty going up.

Anyway, after 5 turns, it will regrow 1 pop to size 4 w/library (image 3). However, the overcrowding penalty comes back and thus we are not able to work a village, as you might expect.

So, to compare, 16 commerce * 10 turns = 160 with no whipping.

This simplistic example, however, gives hardly any production to the city. The question we want to answer is how many turns before you can get the library with no whipping, which will depend on working a mine or something. We know that the whip city lost 160 commerce. After whipping (assuming it doesn't whip again), it will gain 125% from the library (at 100% on the slider). Thus, it will regain at a rate of 4 per turn. It will take 160/4 = 40 turns before it regains the lost commerce.

Say the unwhip city works one mine, thus is only getting 12 commerce / turn, thus the whip city only needs 30 turns to catch back up. The mine gives say 4 hammers/turn. The library costs 90. That's 22 turns.

Wodan

I'm afraid I don't follow whether the different pictures are supposed to represent the same city at different points in time, or the same city given alternate choices about how to build the library, or what. Likewise I don't follow the way you described the scenario(s?) - sorry.

Wodan said:

Okay, let's give it a shot. Here are two pics, one of a 5pop city with no library. It has about 16 raw commerce coming in from working 4 villages.

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But is this reasonable? You've got a granary, but no food in it? All of your cottages have matured to villages?

In other words, is this a position you can reasonably reach if you found the city and start managing it from size 1? Second question: is it reasonable to manage the city in such a way that it reaches this position? Without the library built?

There's also the fact that you are comparing a pure cottage commerce situation to the whip, then trying to compare that to one where you reduce your commerce by mumble percent by running a mine.

Here's a picture of working a mine and one cow.

City will build the library in 10 turns. If the cow is a corn or something with no hammers, then the library will be built in 20 turns. Meanwhile, the city is getting 8 commerce from the villages. 8*20 = 160 commerce. Plus, we have 2 villages maturing for 20 turns = 20 commerce, total 180 commerce.

VoiceOfUnreason said:

But is this reasonable? You've got a granary, but no food in it? All of your cottages have matured to villages?

In other words, is this a position you can reasonably reach if you found the city and start managing it from size 1? Second question: is it reasonable to manage the city in such a way that it reaches this position? Without the library built?

There's also the fact that you are comparing a pure cottage commerce situation to the whip, then trying to compare that to one where you reduce your commerce by mumble percent by running a mine.

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Current status of granary etc. is irrelevant for the most part. If you feel differently, feel free to post your own example.

I'm not trying to "prove" anything, just to see what everyone thinks.

Wodan

Go back to the 2nd screenshot (size 3 all happy). You should grow the city like that for 4 turns, stopping just before it grows to size 4 and 1 unhappy, and work 3 villages to stagnate the city until whip weariness goes away (10 turns). So you actually only stop working 3 of the villages for 4 turns, and 1 of them for 10 turns. And now you have a library.

Wodan said:

Current status of granary etc. is irrelevant for the most part. If you feel differently, feel free to post your own example.

Click to expand...

Current status of the granary is critical to correctly estimating regrowth rate. State of the cottages is critical to properly estimating the edge odds.

And, of course, I had completely overlooked the fact that your city had no garrison. Realistic or not, that screwed up my understanding of the position (which is my own fault).

Let us assume, for the moment, a couple of conditions. First, that surplus food makes whipping more effective (we can go back an examine this later), and second that we are talking about a city with sufficient grassland tiles to have some left over after we cap out. I'm going to add to these the assumption that the tiles are pre-improved, as we prefer, for free. Worker turn management will screw with the math.

Given those two assumptions, what if we begin by modeling a football field - 20 grassland tiles, no resources. River commerce we can deal with later (we'll have to weigh in the extra commerce lost), but for the moment assume a conveniently located moat so that we can irrigate as we like.

Assume a happy cap of 5?

OK. With no whip at all, you don't need a granary. So you might as well go straight for the library which appears on turn 90. At this point, you've worked cottages for 90, 79, 67, 54, and 40 turns.

If you just whip the library.... You hit size 4 on turn 36. You could whip now, but I'm guessing it's better to keep growing til turn 48. Now whip - two pop go away (there will be 19 overflow), but one grows back between turns, and the other resumes 13 turns after that (after the happiness goes away). So the whip has cost you one turn on the third cottage, and 14 turns on the other two. Total work is 90,79,66, 40, 26. Looking at it very roughly, that's 29 extra town turns with a library (+29) against 29 lost turns of work, plus the 25% boost to all of the non town turns when you had a library, plus 60 hammers? I'm pretty sure that's a win, but somebody can spreadsheet it.

Now add the granary to the mix. The first two growth points are the same. On turn 35 we whip for one pop, but he grows back immediately on the turn. At turn 48 the cruel opression has been forgotten, and you grow. 8 turns later? You grow again. 90, 79, 66, 40, 32, and at the end you have a free granary - not so much thrill.

Try both? It's the same as before up to turn 68, I think it is. You are just about to cross over to size six. Whip, grow back to size 4. 10 turns later the happy cap releases and the 5th pop can work again. So 90,79,66,39,22, I think it is, plus 30 hammers and a granary.

This is all sort of handwavy, I'm afraid. I'd recommend trying it: custom continents so you can have one of your own, build a football field, gift yourself pottery and writing and a second city with a bunch of cottages, convert all the commerce to gold, note the size of the treasury at the critical points, and subtract the contribution of the stagnating capital (which should probably be building something expensive, like the Big Stone Trophy).

OK, here's a playground to work with. The goal is to maximize the amount of research you get by 625BC. Constraints: you may not touch Bombay, the commerce slider, or change your research. You may not take any steps to lift the happyness cap. You may not build any units. You may not move either of your warriors. You cannot run specialists in Cottagetown.

In other words, your weapons are your allocation of the working population of Cottagetown, your choice of buildings, and judicious use of the whip.

The basic play of working grassland cottages for 90 turns yields 2131 research, -25 gold (maintenance in cottagetown when population hits size 6), no hammers, by @625. 1080 of that research should be Dehli, the bonus research beaker, and the 20% bonus on that research.

The goal here is to experiment with different possible terrain choices for a commerce city during the early part of the game. Yes, there is probably a best way to play this specific layout (Hellooooooo, rice), but the real goal is to experiment with variations of Wodan's original premise. How should you play if all the world is flat and green - should you irrigate? Should you cottage the hills or mine them? When is the best time to whip?

In particular, is there a combination of tiles here where using the whip produces less research than building the old fashioned way?

I'll experiment. Thanks.

Wodan

I was debating this.
On the 'Age of Discovery' mod, I used Slavery lots- most of my cities were coastal and Jungle/Food resources- fast growing but pathetic production. I have been using slavery massivley all game- but now I'm finding slow growth and similar to have weakened me a great deal later on. Hmmm...