Effort put into production negates over time.

I was in a situation where I could not afford to have a standing army and with nothing else as a priority build I decided to almost complete a Scout, 3 Pikemen and 3 Archers. The timing was perfect to move on to building Machu Pichu and do a few road connections, after completion it was as if I had never even started building the soldiers because they had all returned to a FULL BUILD requirement.

I had suspected this was the case many times before, but this time playing at Marathon speed it was quite obvious. Has this always been the case, and does it also apply to G&K and BNW?

EDIT - Does it also apply to any building that is left incomplete for a later time?

I always thought hammers were lost if you weren't actively producing a unit or building.

After 50 turns of being "abandoned", a building will lose 1% of its current hammers per turn
After 10 turns of being "abandoned", a unit will lose 2% of its current hammers per turn

The turn values DON'T scale with game speed. Loss is of current value, not the value when abandoned, so if buildings were set to 10% loss per turn it would be 1000 -> 900 -> 810 -> 729 -> 656 and not 1000 -> 900 -> 800 -> 700 -> 600

Sonereal said:

I always thought hammers were lost if you weren't actively producing a unit or building.

Click to expand...

What is the rate of loss?
Is this loss exaggerated by playing a slower speed?
Does the level we play at have more or less of an effect?
Does this happen on all versions of CivV?

In my mind one of the attractions of CivV is to be able to think ahead and forward plan, this seems to go against what the game is all about!

EDIT - Thanks Whooward69 - My questions have been answered.

whoward69 said:

Code:

<Row Name="BUILDING_PRODUCTION_DECAY_TIME">
  <Value>50</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="BUILDING_PRODUCTION_DECAY_PERCENT">
  <Value>99</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="UNIT_PRODUCTION_DECAY_TIME">
  <Value>10</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="UNIT_PRODUCTION_DECAY_PERCENT">
  <Value>98</Value>
</Row>

After 10 turns of being "abandoned", a unit will lose 2% of its current hammers per turn

The turn values DON'T scale with game speed. Loss is of current value, not the value when abandoned, so if buildings were set to 10% loss per turn it would be 1000 -> 900 -> 810 -> 729 -> 656 and not 1000 -> 900 -> 800 -> 700 -> 600

Click to expand...

Am I right in the following assumption which is an estimation?

Marathon speed - 60 turns to build wonder, pikeman will have to be rebuilt from scratch.
Quick speed (my usual) - 13 turns to build wonder, the effect on the pikeman is negligible.

Bearing in mind that it can take as much as 30 turns to build a unit on Marathon speed, how about adding another build turn at the point where it would now take two turns to build. Would the clock then reset to the values that have been shown?

I can think of many reasons to have an almost prebuilt small army, not least of which might be the threat of invasion. If you do have an almost prebuilt army, are the AI aware of it and could it act as a deterrent from DOWs?

My only question not answered from earlier in the thread is; does this apply to G&K and BNW as well as VANILLA?

The hammer decay that whoward outlined is the same for vanilla, G&K and BNW.

Browd said:

The hammer decay that whoward outlined is the same for vanilla, G&K and BNW.

Click to expand...

Thanks, so in that case the VANILLA prefix does not apply!!

Moderator Action: Yep. Prefix removed from thread.

TractorBoy said:

Would the clock then reset to the values that have been shown?

Click to expand...

Not sure

TractorBoy said:

I can think of many reasons to have an almost prebuilt small army, not least of which might be the threat of invasion. If you do have an almost prebuilt army, are the AI aware of it and could it act as a deterrent from DOWs?

Click to expand...

The AI has no knowledge of what units another player is building in its calculation of "player might"

TractorBoy said:

My only question not answered from earlier in the thread is; does this apply to G&K and BNW as well as VANILLA?

Click to expand...

Same values for all three.

Very useful thread. I didn't even know that buildings under construction "decayed", and assumed that unit construction progress wasn't even saved at all.

I generally try to avoid switching construction in the middle of something as much as possible. (maybe I subconsciously consider it cheating or something). However, it really isn't cheating, so I should try to do it more often.

Certainly isn't cheating -- it's often necessary.

Say you're 3 turns away from Astronomy and want to build an observatory. So you put 3 turns into a galleass, switch to observatory, and when the observatory is done, you switch back to finish the galleass.