Vocum Sineratio: The Whip

In fact, in order to reduce micromanagement, the following should be changed imo:

1) remove the "no hammers invested" penalty,
2) remove overflow cap,
3) make the whipping/rushing/chopping apply any hammer bonuses only to the portion it takes to finish the current project, not to the overflow (and if the overflow is then used to build another building with the bonus, only then apply the bonus).

That way you can prevent the need to build each building/unit for one turn and micromanage queues, and also remove the exploit of speeding up wonders with an overflow from bonus-produced buildings.

Martinus said:

1) remove the "no hammers invested" penalty

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I like this idea. It would certainly reduce the necessary micromanagement and I don't think its too large a boost to slavery now that they have somewhat nerfed it in BTS with higher upkeep and revolt events.

2) remove overflow cap

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That is a slippery slope to head down. With no overflow cap it would be pretty easy to build up a ton of overflow hammers over time in preparation for a big project becoming available.

3) make the whipping/rushing/chopping apply any hammer bonuses only to the portion it takes to finish the current project, not to the overflow (and if the overflow is then used to build another building with the bonus, only then apply the bonus).

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That is basically how it works now. The actual hammers that overflow currently have the production bonuses factored out. The only overflow hammers that retain the production bonuses are the ones being converted into gold. The reason people like to overflow whips into wonders is because there is a whip penalty associated with hurrying wonders. So by overflowing a normal whip into it they are able to get some hammers without sacrificing efficiency.

Thanx for the guide VoU, i find it very useful.
Anyway i've a question i'd like to discuss with you all. I'm a pretty new player so apologize me if this is a horsehockey analysis.

In this article VoU described Slavery as converting food to hammer. I think that is reductivem in fact it convert some commerce (research) too.

Let me try to explain with a virtual example.
Suppose we have just one city, pop 8 with a 100% research rate.
This city works 8 tiles: 2-4-0, 2-2-0, 2-5-0, 2-3-0, 2-1-2, 2-0-5, 2-0-3, 2-5-0, 2-0-2 (it means: Food(F)-Hammer(H)-Commerce(C)). We have a +2F surplus.
Whip 3 pops and remove this tiles: 2-0-2, 2-0-3, 2-2-0 so we lost 5C and 2H each turn. Suppose that after the whip turn we grow from 5 to 6 citizen and readd the 2-2-0 tiles. So for grow from 6 to 7 we need 16turns and from 7 back to 8 we need 17turns. In the first 16turns we lost a total of 80C and in the next 17turn (working 2-0-3 tile) we lost 34C for a total amount of 124baker that's something we've to count as whip cost, i think...

What do you think? It's all wrong?

P.S.: i'm sorry for my bad english, i'm not a native english speaker

Thanx,

fadeh

Anyway i've a question i'd like to discuss with you all. I'm a pretty new player so apologize me if this is a horsehockey analysis.

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At this point, what you are talking about is more along the lines of the opportunity cost of the whip.... In other words, what could you do with the food instead of whipping?

I don't go into that very much here, because there are so many different ways to use food in the game, and the value of those choices vary depending on circumstance. Much easier to duck the issue, and wish everyone the best of luck.

BUT... I'm not sure how to handle your example, aside from demonstrating that a city with a poor growth curve is a poor candidate for whipping, and maybe outlining a general program for regrowing the population after whipping.

That is to say, that +2F/turn is really awful when you are below the happy cap, and to me suggests that not only are you growing too slowly now, but that you have been growing too slowly all along. Circumstances alter cases, especially in the opening, but as a general rule later cities should grow to the happy cap as quickly as possible, then divert the food to other uses.

A more reasonable example would have some farms available, so that you could switch from productive food neutral tiles, to less productive growth tiles. In that case, you jump to the farms to return to size 7 as quickly as possible, and then use additional food surplus to arrive at size 8 on time. You are still paying an opportunity cost, of course, but if you work through the math you'll find it is much lower.

And of course your example ignores the advantage of the Granary - I shudder to think how long it took to get the city to size 8 without one.

VoiceOfUnreason said:

BUT... I'm not sure how to handle your example, aside from demonstrating that a city with a poor growth curve is a poor candidate for whipping, and maybe outlining a general program for regrowing the population after whipping.

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Thanx for your reply VoU. What you say is correct, for now i can't dig into that much detail like you... The example I used is not really useful, I agree. You may also say that 100/33turns are not so expansive... but what I wish to know if there are some cases (where whipping is praticable) you may lose some important while whipping... i'll try to find a more realistic example, if any


Thanx alot for you explaination,

lennox

lennoxl said:

Thanx for your reply VoU. What you say is correct, for now i can't dig into that much detail like you... The example I used is not really useful, I agree. You may also say that 100/33turns are not so expansive... but what I wish to know if there are some cases (where whipping is praticable) you may lose some important while whipping... i'll try to find a more realistic example, if any


Thanx alot for you explaination,

lennox

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VoU already answered this. It's all about the opportunity cost = what you could have done with the food.
Let's say you run caste system and not slavery. you cannot whip away your unhappies.
But you still can use all your food to get near the growth which would bring you above the happy cap, then switch all (or at least a lot) workers working food tiles to merchants or scientists or even artists for a few turns. you indeed converted the food into "specialist turns" giving gold, beakers, hammers or culture + GPPs.
It's not a cost of the whip, it's another use of the food.

Ok, thanx for your explaination... maybe i've to study a little more

lennox

OK, I found the original post to be a bit confusing, maybe there's a beginners guide to whipping?? But what I got from it was this: With whipping you can focus more on food and commerce tiles, leave production tiles unworked, and still come out ahead production wise?

AccipiterQ said:

OK, I found the original post to be a bit confusing, maybe there's a beginners guide to whipping?? But what I got from it was this: With whipping you can focus more on food and commerce tiles, leave production tiles unworked, and still come out ahead production wise?

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Ugh. This is intended to be both a Beginner's guide and an advanced guide. Maybe you can help me figure out what's missing from the beginner's part.


But yes, that's the main motivation behind whipping.

From this it follows that, when you are trying to figure out where to place your cities, settling near good food resources can make up for a lack of production tiles.

I've got some questions after reading and trying out a few games. Beginner level stuff.

1) Is there a rule of thumb as to a minimum population to keep after the whip? What kind of tile would be better whipped away than worked?

Keep working: 4 or 3 or 5 and better tiles

...and whip away any tile that is producing less. Something like that?

2) I read that some people even whip away their specialists. If say we're working all the best tiles in a city and running a pair of specialists to stagnate at the population cap, and we can build our courthouse in eleven turns. Would it be better to whip away four population and let it grow back to the same condition taking over ten turns?

3) Say I ignore all the details, and other than extremely low production cities where I whip aggressively, elsewhere I always let the city grow unhappy and wait until the whip takes us back to the happy cap, then whip. Is there a big flaw to this method?

4) In general, is the whip something that is meant to make up for lack of production, or is it something that one should use whenever one can?

Read the main article andmost of page one - really good work VoU

VoiceOfUnreason said:

My worldbuilder test suggests that it does, and this matches what the SDK says is going on.

If you are aware of how the code keeps track of the oppression penalty (reread the italisized section under HAPPINESS), you'll see that is has to be this way. The only data that the game is keeping is that of the number of turns of unhappy remaining. So the game has to be able to calculate the number of unhappy faces purely from the number of turns remaining.

Consider instead how the game would have to work if buildings and units were treated seperately. For example: if you have 15 turns of unhappy remaining, the game would need to be able to distinguish three building whips (5+5+5, therefore three unhappy faces) from a building plus a unit (5+10).

You could certainly write the code to do that, but it would require recording a history of whips - the code isn't there today.

You can test this for yourself by loading up a warlords game as the Aztec, and using the worldbuilder to gift yourself the sacrificial altar, etc. Or just play a game, build yourself the sa, put an axe in the queue, and hover over the hurry button.

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This method seems especially practical to me when a city of mine has to wait for growth; when it has/ soon will have a problem with unhealthiness or unhappiness. But still 30 hammers is very less. I doubt I will use it any time.

For example, so as to build a courthouse of 120 hammers requires 2 populations even if you are organized. Still 2 population is much. But this is normal as whipping is only sensible in old ages, historically.

By the way, is the multiplier for whipping hammers the same with unit&building costs? Because playing with huge&marathon multiplies costs by 6.

Since this civic has the same Low Maintenance cost as the Tribalism civic it replaces, you need to have a very certain purpose to justify delaying a switch to this civic as soon as it becomes available.

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In later versions of BTS the upkeep has been increased to medium.

GooglyBoogly said:

In later versions of BTS the upkeep has been increased to medium.

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and there is a painful event (slave revolt)

cabert said:

and there is a painful event (slave revolt)

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I get so sick of random events, that I'm starting to disable them. They may balance out, but I don't like things that add more "chance" elements to the game than necessary. I've had games where slave revolts cost me the game, and others where I never got one while running the civic longer. The civic is too powerful in the early game to ignore, so everyone will run it early unless given restrictions.

The battle RNG is a necessity, games being won or lost on events is not...(and yes, the castle +3 diplo event has allowed me to change plans to diplo win because of its super powerful easy bonus).

Even more than that though, I find the random events ANNOYING. The peak erupted, for the 2nd time. This building is destroyed so you have to go rebuild it, pop up #5321...go away!

I've actually taken a city more easily from the slave revolt on the AI's part (it drops defenses) too. I dislike this event greatly, I'd rather NOT have my games positively or negatively affected by chance, especially when chance greatly impacts the usage of a civic that's so strong (just look at its uses in this guide!) that you can't really ignore it...even moreso in MP but even against the AI...

I'd rather NOT have my games positively or negatively affected by chance,

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Well then random events are obviously not for you. By their nature everything they do is either a posititve or a negative effect for someone (excluding unfufilled quests).

If you have always felt this way, why not turn off the events from the start?
It doesn't matter how well balanced or interesting they are, if you are fundamentally opposed to any game-changing random effect, then obv random events are not for you.

By the way, any combats you engage in will be affected by chance, your spawn location is affected by chance, and even before BTS there has always been the 1/10000 random event to strike a resource in the mountains. If you feel that ANY randomness to too hard, then CIV isn't the game for you, you should go play something else like MIST or chess or something.

i'm not going to disable the random events, but I agree there is something painful when a volcano disrupts a fully grown town, or worse3 or 4 of those...
My point was that in BtS, you shoudn't go automatically to slavery if it has no use.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that far more annoying than the random events is having to rebuild the exact same tile improvement 18 times per game because the AI keeps sending in spies.

Bandobras Took said:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that far more annoying than the random events is having to rebuild the exact same tile improvement 18 times per game because the AI keeps sending in spies.

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Yep... But it gets annoying, when you get tragic mining accident 4-6 times in a game in the same mine don't you think.. It's like... Do they never learn?! Or what about getting a slave revolt in your capital for third time in 10 turns, during the construction of critical wonder? Well, I'm still keeping random events on, because I like the quests.

Zanttu said:

Yep... But it gets annoying, when you get tragic mining accident 4-6 times in a game in the same mine don't you think.. It's like... Do they never learn?! Or what about getting a slave revolt in your capital for third time in 10 turns, during the construction of critical wonder? Well, I'm still keeping random events on, because I like the quests.

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1) dealing with quests are generally waste of hammers and time in high difficulty levels.

2) you know, mines have a chance of discovering new resources like gold, gems etc. just because of this i built mines in every hill tile which is in my cultural border but not in any fat cross. i, of course, built some mines in some of my hill tiles in my fat crosses as well.

i think this is also one of random events. i don't remember if that event existed before BTS but resource discovering is a MUST for every game. so when you disable random events, if that event will not happen, than this is a big disadvantage.