Money Does Grow on Trees: How to Convert Forests into Lots and Lots of Gold

I have been trying to tell him that workerturns is a much more precious resource in normal for a while.

He just needs to play one game at quick speed, then this is going to be clear as crystal in his mind. :).
 
I have been trying to tell him that workerturns is a much more precious resource in normal for a while.

No it's not. I've played Normal and I don't see what's so important about having excess worker turns.

Just improve the important resources, build a couple of roads later, and whip away everything else. You can spend the rest on chops.

1 worker per city is fine with a little micro.
 
...it's unrealistic (and/or bad) to have so many workers that you can chop out a wonder in <10 turns in two cities at once and still be improving the tiles you need.

Trying to get OPTIMAL workers on higher levels means you are trading off lots of land that the AI's are going to quickly gobble up. Therefore, it is not really optimal.

Anyway, I am guessing Marigold must always use expansionist trait? Then the other must be industrious?
 
Trying to get OPTIMAL workers on higher levels means you are trading off lots of land that the AI's are going to quickly gobble up. Therefore, it is not really optimal.

Anyway, I am guessing Marigold must always use expansionist trait? Then the other must be industrious?

That would be bismark, and iirc he did a HA rush against bismark. So thats not the case. :)
 
Trying to get OPTIMAL workers on higher levels means you are trading off lots of land that the AI's are going to quickly gobble up. Therefore, it is not really optimal.

Anyway, I am guessing Marigold must always use expansionist trait? Then the other must be industrious?

I almost never choose EXP since I try to stay away from building workers. I've started to re-think that because fast granaries are freaking awesome. With EXP you can whip the granary at pop 3, and sometimes pop 2 in contrast to the usual pop 4 granary whip. This makes a pretty big difference in city development speed.

In terms of fast-building traits, EXP is the best. ORG out-classes it though because of the other economic benefits.

My favorite is ORG. SPI is fun, but FIN is stronger.

I stay away from Bismark since his UU and UB stinks.
 
Trying to get OPTIMAL workers on higher levels means you are trading off lots of land that the AI's are going to quickly gobble up. Therefore, it is not really optimal.

Trying to decipher what you said, it sounds like you're suggesting skimping on workers to get more settlers out faster, which i agree with.
 
Trying to decipher what you said, it sounds like you're suggesting skimping on workers to get more settlers out faster, which i agree with.

Yes. Or War Chariots, HAs, or some other rush unit. Or the GW and the Pyramids if the map permits.

BTW, this is why my economy in Marathon is always near-crash.

The thing is this: you only have so many high-pop cities- they can either:

1. Build settlers.
2. Build workers.
3. Build granaries
4. Build libraries
5. Build Wonders.
6. Build units for rush with whips.

This means that I only build workers 1/6th of the time.

Also, if you're building Wonders, and your happy cap isn't high, sometimes you don't want a granary since it'll be a waste.

Furthermore, after building a granary, you don't want to build a worker, because it stops your city from growing.

See? Hence I hate building workers.

EDIT: Also, I have these seemingly random moments of bloodlust (generally 50-60 turns before a neighbor gets Feudalism) where I'm like, "I MUST KILL YOU." So you can see why this might cut into my worker production.
 
uhhh ok, so you don't like to build a lot of workers but still have enough to chop out a wonder in two cities at once in 10 turns? Inconsistency.
 
I almost never choose EXP since I try to stay away from building workers. I've started to re-think that because fast granaries are freaking awesome. With EXP you can whip the granary at pop 3, and sometimes pop 2 in contrast to the usual pop 4 granary whip. This makes a pretty big difference in city development speed.

Please don't whip granaries.
 
I regularly whip granaries unless it's a food-starved city.

Brings the pop points below happy cap, and makes the whipped granary extra-effective. Opens the door for more future whips of, you know, units. Also, alleviates the need for workers. I tend to have lots of pop 3-6 cities with barracks and granaries in them. Perfect for military build-up, and city-placement is no biggy. As long as it's next to a food, and a hill or two and it's fine.

Pretty much everything I do is designed to kill someone at some important time in the game. Like HAs pre-Feud, or Ele-pult pre-Engineering, or Janissaries pre-Gunpowder for AI.

How do you play? You can't slow-build granaries, because you'll hit happy cap long before it's built. Chopping a granary is ok, but you have to spend lots of worker turns, and some places just don't have too many forests.

If you're on 6 cities and 7 workers, and all the important tiles are improved, then you can set all 7 to chopping.
 

I thought I had read that piece of advice in a whipping how-to, but after searching the guides I've concluded my memory is faulty. My mistake!

How do you play? You can't slow-build granaries, because you'll hit happy cap long before it's built.

... I guess we play differently?
My granaries don't take that looong to build. :lol:
 
Please don't whip granaries.

depends on the food bucket position more then anything. Optimal point for finishing granary is actually pretty tricky and honestly I didn't grasp completely the math provided by (I guess) vicawoo in his "how to build granary" thread.

What I took from it is, that best point for finishing granary is when you are around 50% of bucket for next pop (aka if you're size 2, you need 26F for size 3, the point is 13... if you would be size 4, the point is 15 and you whip the granary)
 
depends on the food bucket position more then anything. Optimal point for finishing granary is actually pretty tricky and honestly I didn't grasp completely the math provided by (I guess) vicawoo in his "how to build granary" thread.

What I took from it is, that best point for finishing granary is when you are around 50% of bucket for next pop (aka if you're size 2, you need 26F for size 3, the point is 13... if you would be size 4, the point is 15 and you whip the granary)

If you want to optimize, you will want to have 50% of the food bucket the same turn the granary is produced. Then any food you'll produce will be store in the granary. If you have less than 50% of the bucket, you will lose one turn of food production which won't be stored. If you have more than 50% of the bucket, the granary will not be full for the next growth.

If you are size N and 1-pop whip the granary you need to whip when you have :

Code:
(food need for the growth at size N-1) / 2 - (food/turn you produce after whipping)

If you are size N and 2-pop whip the granary, you need to whip when you have :

Code:
(food need for the growth at size N-2) / 2 - (food/turn you produce after whipping)

It's always better to optimize, but an approximation I use is to whip around 25% for a 2-pop whip and 35% for a 1-pop whip.
 
depends on the food bucket position more then anything. Optimal point for finishing granary is actually pretty tricky and honestly I didn't grasp completely the math provided by (I guess) vicawoo in his "how to build granary" thread.

What I took from it is, that best point for finishing granary is when you are around 50% of bucket for next pop (aka if you're size 2, you need 26F for size 3, the point is 13... if you would be size 4, the point is 15 and you whip the granary)

This is correct.
The optimal place to whip the granary is when the food bar is half of the ammount of food, that is required to grow on the level you will whip down too.


For example, if you are at pop4, contemplating a whip of your granary.
You will do a 2-pop whip. Which will take you down to pop2.
The ammount required to grow to pop3 from pop2, is 24 food.
You then want to have 24/12 food in your bar, once your granary is built.

So if you have a 2 food surplus in your city, you should accually whip, when your food bar (at pop 4) is at 10/28.


The reason for this is the inner storage of the granary.
This is beeing filled in the same way as the regular food bar, however the granary can only be filled with 50% of the food bar, so if you are at 12/24 once the granary is filled. The granary will have just enough time, to fill up 12 food when you grow from 12 -> 24.


http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/food_growth.php
 
If you want to optimize, you will want to have 50% of the food bucket the same turn the granary is produced. Then any food you'll produce will be store in the granary. If you have less than 50% of the bucket, you will lose one turn of food production which won't be stored. If you have more than 50% of the bucket, the granary will not be full for the next growth.

If you are size N and 1-pop whip the granary you need to whip when you have :

Code:
(food need for the growth at size N-1) / 2 - (food/turn you produce after whipping)

If you are size N and 2-pop whip the granary, you need to whip when you have :

Code:
(food need for the growth at size N-2) / 2 - (food/turn you produce after whipping)

It's always better to optimize, but an approximation I use is to whip around 25% for a 2-pop whip and 35% for a 1-pop whip.

I thought it was a bit more complicated, because granaries only stored food gathered after the granary was built. Can someone weigh in with the exact mechanics of granary food storage?

Edit: Nevermind, krikav got it. If a mod happens to swing by, go ahead and delete this post. If not... well, it probably doesn't hurt anything.
 
I am not entierly sure how the inbetween turn mechanics work however.
This might lead me to be "off by one".
 
I think the order is food and then building.

So if you have more than 50% of the bucket and you produce a granary this turn :

- food will be added
- granary will be built

The food produced is not stored for this turn. That's why you want to be at 50% after the granary is built (and therefore, below 50% the turn you produce it). But I'm not entirely sure...
 
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