Drafting for Fun and Profit

@ Jet: To your last 2 posts adressing me, in order...

- If we're drafting from size 7 every turn, the city will effectively be size 6 the entire time. We won't ever have 7 citizens when they actually do something (between turns).

- I already stated my definition of surplus and that yours might be different -> potential for misunderstandings. What I meant was: If it was possible to draft Riflemen to size 5 (it isn't), you need 15 food in the food bar to regrow to the original state. That's the 'total food' I was talking about, to differentiate it from 'food surplus on a given turn'.

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PieceofMind got me perfectly, and spotted a mistake as well (as I said above, the city in the example would actually be size 6 whenever that counts... something I neglected about when totaling food yields of hypothetical tiles).
Since you seem to struggle with my way of phrasing things, I thought it was very helpful of him to clarify, meaning your last post was uncalled for imao.

In fact, since you also quoted an interpretation of my earlier post that would amount to utter nonsense AGAIN, I'm not sure whether you're just trolling (if I'm making statements that ridiculous, it wouldn't be worth anyone's time to have me clarify them).

I'm not trolling. I'm trying to understand post 51.

"If it was possible to draft Riflemen to size 5 (it isn't), you need 15 food in the food bar to regrow to the original state. That's the 'total food' I was talking about, to differentiate it from 'food surplus on a given turn'."

I don't understand this either.
1. It is possible to draft a Rifleman from size 6 to size 5. Drafting from a size 5 city is impossible, but then it wouldn't make sense for you to say "to size 5".
2. Regrowth depends on the amount currently food in the food bar and the food surplus, not the amount currently in the food bar alone.
3. Post 51 said "actually", implying that it was correcting something in post 50. I don't see what the correction was meant to be.

1. Strange... previous to my last post I tested it in worldbuilder and couldn't draft Riflemen from size 6 to 5. Either a glitch or - more likely - another mistake on my part.

2. Since food surplus affects what goes into the bar, I'd just focus on the bar... counting from the bottom immediately after drafting on normal speed, size+10 (Rifles), 2(size)+21 (Infantry) or 3(size)+33 need to go in there until we're at the same state as before. Divide by the length of your desired draft cycle to get the surplus you need (note: the surplus changes mid-cycle for high-end units unless the citizens we regrow work food-neutral tiles)

3. I merely wished to clarify - 'you need a surplus of x to draft continuously' would, in the mind of a reder, be followed either by 'every turn' (happiness not an issue) or 'every y turns, 10 on Normal' (sustainable rate limited by happiness).
It seems I only managed to muddle things up and there was nothing that needed clarifying in the first place. A more general expression would also help in case of higher-end units since it's simply not possible to sustainably draft (mech) infantry every turn.

Clearer? Useful? either way, I think I'd better shut up either way

Me too.

Iranon said:

Clearer? Useful? either way, I think I'd better shut up either way

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The thread seemed to be getting just a tiny bit cranky recently, but I'd like to say thanks to both of you for pushing through to clarity. Hearing/reading things phrased in different ways and having people discuss misunderstandings of those different phrasings is a really effective way for me to get a much deeper understanding of a topic quickly.

It's one of the reasons why I'd generally rather read a somewhat muddled forum discussion of a topic than just read straight out of a textbook. The textbook will be more straightforward, but it won't show pitfalls in the process of understanding that you get to see when people are actually having a real discussion.

I think hermit's guide to specialist economy explains drafting for fun and for profit even better. Also it makes you understand that it is good by showing mad power graphs. I tried the advice and before the discovery of the artillery I had a medium sized renaissance army. After discovering artillery I used the GP pool to trigger a GA and swapped to slavery/nationhood/theo/merc. In just 7 turns I had a large early industrial army.

It's a very nice civic that allows you to bolster your ranks, but doesn't replace good old fashioned production.

The fact that you can draft and get +2 happiness for easy and cheap, and get +25% Espionage and get No civic cost really makes this civic shine. The espionage alone is huge if you play a spy heavy game.

The drafting is one of a good set of complementary civics for war.

always remember if the unhappiness is a problem then draft units from the city where you built globe theatre if you did not build it to bad!

Great thread! And for opponents of this strategy, I would simply say that, given the right leader civics, drafting from a large empire can quickly form an army that is not only large, but elite as well.

I personally like to go in and out of Nationhood, using nationhood during tough wars then switching to free speech in times of peace.

Has anyone thought of playing as Tokugawa, not researching gunpowder for a while so they can draft samurai.

Hamilton321 said:

Has anyone thought of playing as Tokugawa, not researching gunpowder for a while so they can draft samurai.

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Well the upside to that approach would be that you can get your army of draftees much quicker.

On the other hand, the downside is that your drafted samurais are much weaker than the drafted rifles would be - yes, the samurais have promotions but unlike draftles, they don't ignore city walls and castles. Then, the AI will have anti-melee promotions. When going to major wars, you'll always want a military tech advantage if possible, which you don't have when beelining Nationalism, rather than beelining Rifling (while also picking up Nationalism).

But, to actually answer your question - no

I just had my first experience with Drafting last night in a game I played as Rameses. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact you get your unit immediately unlike when using the whip. From reading here, I also realized that it's independent of the city's production in queue, so Drafting can certainly raise armies extremely fast, as even only 3 units per turn is still supplemental to what you're already building, and 3 units a turn will add up quickly.

Anyway, it got me thinking for a bit. I never ran Nationhood before -- ever -- because when I sat down and thought about it, it's not as efficient for turning food into units (not hammers, UNITS) compared to Slavery except for Muskets and Rifles. Granted, Rifles are such a HUGE power spike that this stratgey alone (drafting rifles) can be a viable way to push and win the game. It doesn't have any economic synergy with either cottage, specialist, or hammer (state property) economies. Free Speech is better for CE, Bureaucracy for small empires of any focus, Vassalage + the whip produces better promoted armies of the same size or better in the same time, etc. I found that after thinking about it a bit, it has a powerful window of opportunity (between Gunpowder and Assembly Line) in general, and specifically at any time regardless of the tech era when units are needed in an emergency as has been pointed out many times already.

To illustrate a bit, consider the unit types that can be drafted and their effective cost per pop under the draft:
Mace: 70 per pop
Musket: 80 per pop
Rifle : 110 per pop
Infantry : 70 per pop
Mech : 66.7 per pop

If you assume that Police State just isn't part of the equation (you don't have the mids and Facism is a late tech), you can easily have an effective 67.5 hammers per pop whipped in the GT city if it has a forge and Heroic Epic or (God forbid) IronWorks. When moving up to the later units, your effective hammers per pop whippable increases to 82.5 in the GT with the addition of a powered factory. I see this as window of useful efficiency (NOT effectiveness): For anything less than a Musket, you can whip almost as efficiently (and abuse overflow to stay in parity production-wise while managing happiness much better) and anything greater than a Rifle, you're going to be more efficient per pop whipped assuming you have the newly unlocked hammer multipliers in place. In the GT as a specific case, the infrastructure needed is considerably lesser to get a similar effect, and it's definitely always worth it either way as the major draft anger means nothing here.

The implications empire-wide are considerably different, and a bit more in Drafting's favor over time or whipping in the short term: normal non-HE non-IronWorks cities can only get +75% hammers under the whip without Police State, or 52.5 hammers per whippable pop. Getting a 110 hammer unit for 1 pop via the draft is about 110% (109.524% to be exact) more efficient in the case of Rifles in this situation. This seems to be offset in theory (i.e in my head, I haven't tried it) by the fact that whipping is more sustainable in smaller empires as well as being better at managing the anger through better whip choices (i.e. 2 pops vs 1 pops) along with overflow being a factor, and finally the elephant in the room: you can whip as many units as you have cities in one turn if they are large enough, but you are still limited to 3 per turn under the draft. Long term sustainability seems to be chiefly limited by happiness for Draft vs. growth rate for whipping, meaning aggressive Drafting should be more sustainable with the culture slider than a situation where you are repeatedly using multiple pop whips to crank units even if it's more efficient than Drafting at that point.

As the article points out, I believe that it definitely qualifies as end-game scenario type of thing. Unlike going for Free Speech + Emancipation/Caste + Free Market/Environmentalism for a push to cultural victory, or Bureau+State Property+Universal Suffrage+Caste to crank out the spaceship, sliding into Police State (if you have it) + Nationhood + Slavery + Theo is the final push towards a victory through war, after all your major teching is done and you just want to kill. The beauty of it, as I see it, is you could pull it off a bit earlier than the others through a strong abuse of a military tech advantage (Rifles, specifically) to power spike so hard you can't be denied and wouldn't even need to grab other military techs. It's definitely something I'm gonna try in my next game where I plan to run a pure SE which I've never done before.

Has anyone noticed that the usefulness of each civic varies notoriously depending on game speed?