I've seen it repeated on here that slavery converts surplus food to hammers in about a 1:2 ratio. The logic is that it takes roughly 15 to grow a pop point with a granary in the early game, and you get 30 per point from whipping.
After thinking about it, I think the ratio is much closer to 1:1, being only a little better than simply using the surplus to work hills and plains. I'll explain my reasoning, which very well may be flawed.
There's two problems with the 15 per 30 argument:
- No matter how many citizens you whip, you still decrease your happy cap by 1 for 10 turns. Even if you can only work a forest, you're still giving up 10 every cycle.
- You must spend some time with an unhappy citizen, which cuts into your surplus food for no gain.
So let's consider a simple example. Your happy cap is stuck at 5. You have a grassland pigs tile, and as many forests of any terrain type as you want to work. I'd love to provide a screenshot, but I'm clueless with worldbuilder.
Without whipping you get 5 from the city center and 4 forests, and you get 6 surplus from the city center and the pigs. If you spend the surplus on switching grassland forests to plains or hill forests, you get 11 per turn.
Now what we get from whipping obviously depends on how we do it. The conventional wisdom is to 2-pop whip once every 10 turns, just before we'll grow into unhappiness. I'll try to end the cycle with just as much food as I started. I also believe the unhappy citizen will hurt our production, so I'll try to minimize the time we're unhappy.
We'll start with 26/30 at pop 5, and 2-pop whip for 60 going to size 3 for one turn. I'll configure the food surplus to 3
1) 26/26, 6
Now we grow to size 4, and are at happy cap. I'll configure surplus to 2
2) 16/28 8
3) 18/28 ''
4) 20/28 ''
5) 22/28 ''
6) 24/28 ''
7) 26/28 ''
Now we're back to 5 pop, but have an unhappy citizen. I'll go to max growth of 6, but we lose 2 by being unhappy.
8) 14/30 4
9) 18/30 ''
10) 22/30 ''
And now finally we're back where we started. We've made 60 + 6 + 6*8 + 3*4 = 128
Remember 5 hammers per turn have nothing to do with surplus food, so this is 78 over 10 turns from a 6 surplus. That's a 1:1.3 ratio. We only get 18 extra hammers every 10 turns by using whipping, and we don't even have any mines?!
Ok, that's an extra axeman every 20 turns, but that doesn't sound quite right. Are my whipping tactics or my math wrong? (or both?)
After thinking about it, I think the ratio is much closer to 1:1, being only a little better than simply using the surplus to work hills and plains. I'll explain my reasoning, which very well may be flawed.
There's two problems with the 15 per 30 argument:
- No matter how many citizens you whip, you still decrease your happy cap by 1 for 10 turns. Even if you can only work a forest, you're still giving up 10 every cycle.
- You must spend some time with an unhappy citizen, which cuts into your surplus food for no gain.
So let's consider a simple example. Your happy cap is stuck at 5. You have a grassland pigs tile, and as many forests of any terrain type as you want to work. I'd love to provide a screenshot, but I'm clueless with worldbuilder.
Without whipping you get 5 from the city center and 4 forests, and you get 6 surplus from the city center and the pigs. If you spend the surplus on switching grassland forests to plains or hill forests, you get 11 per turn.
Now what we get from whipping obviously depends on how we do it. The conventional wisdom is to 2-pop whip once every 10 turns, just before we'll grow into unhappiness. I'll try to end the cycle with just as much food as I started. I also believe the unhappy citizen will hurt our production, so I'll try to minimize the time we're unhappy.
We'll start with 26/30 at pop 5, and 2-pop whip for 60 going to size 3 for one turn. I'll configure the food surplus to 3
1) 26/26, 6
Now we grow to size 4, and are at happy cap. I'll configure surplus to 2
2) 16/28 8
3) 18/28 ''
4) 20/28 ''
5) 22/28 ''
6) 24/28 ''
7) 26/28 ''
Now we're back to 5 pop, but have an unhappy citizen. I'll go to max growth of 6, but we lose 2 by being unhappy.
8) 14/30 4
9) 18/30 ''
10) 22/30 ''
And now finally we're back where we started. We've made 60 + 6 + 6*8 + 3*4 = 128
Remember 5 hammers per turn have nothing to do with surplus food, so this is 78 over 10 turns from a 6 surplus. That's a 1:1.3 ratio. We only get 18 extra hammers every 10 turns by using whipping, and we don't even have any mines?!
Ok, that's an extra axeman every 20 turns, but that doesn't sound quite right. Are my whipping tactics or my math wrong? (or both?)