building research/gold.

I dont know if it's been discussed already

In Warlords, you can build research at a rate of 1 beaker to 1 hammer + any modifiers. So base rate 12 hammers + forge =15 hammers (I think) = 15 beakers, or 15 gold, or 15 culture notes/turn

Implications for a beeline strategy: Build and army, conquer, build research to the next military tech , upgrade and attack again.

Very useful for the specialist econ, as specialist econ is production heavy.

Shrine city = 2 or 3 mines, building wealth between modifier builds.

Super science city = 2 or 3 mines buiilding research between modifier builds, with a decision to make to build specialists or beakers.It will depend on leader and civics

One good production city funding expansion, units support and city maintenance.

In fact a third economy; Cottage econ, specialist econ, and hammer econ.


How about the Russians with production heavy cities building research to beeline to their laboratory and blitzing a space race.

The state property workshop/watermill production city would propel the civ through to space race victory first with tech then with spaceship parts.


Best part, it's independant of the slider. If you have a good income of gold and beakers in your production cities, you can set the culture slider as high as you need to combat war weariness, increase population. More population, more gold/beakers.

know any improvements that produce 8 hammers?

I'm interested to try this out - nice to have another option to debate.

A mined grass hill = 3 hammers and requires a farmed grassland to support until railroad and biology. So two citizens produce 3 beakers before multipliers.

Thats roughly equivalent to a specialist economy without representation or biology, but without GPP. Its lower than a cottage economy would produce after 10 turns.

It gets interesting with state property - 3 hammers (beakers) and 2 food per tile. But at that time your specialist economy has representation and biology = 6 beakers per tile, or a cottage economy gets up to 7 per tile.

On the other hand it gives a lot of flexibility:
- Minimal infrastructure - basically forge + granary + courthouse
- Unlike libraries, you can capture cities with this infrastructure.
- You can build lots of units when you get an upgraded tech.

Might be very good to combine with spiritual, so when you flip into unit creation mode you can run vassalage / theocracy.

I suspect though that the benefits of this will be mainly endgame when:
- A new / captured city doesn't have time to develop cottages into anything worthwhile.
- You aren't running representation or the city doesn't lend itself to specialists due to existing infrastructure / low food.
- You have enough of a military for defense and need to accelerate your run towards a spaceship.
- You are heading towards a culture win and have set the science slider at zero. Your non culture cities could be terraformed to either run specialists or hammers depending on which gave better results in a city, which would help keep research going.

Thanks, mice, for starting this thread. I thought of doing it myself, but was a little late and I kinda needed my "beauty" sleep. :grin:

One thing I remarked in that thread too: in vanilla cIV you get 1 beaker for 1 base hammer. No modifiers apply: no forge, factory, power, ironworks bonus. As you've already said, all of those apply in Warlords. This is true for building research, culture and wealth.

So in fact early on this strategy is as good in vanilla cIV as in Warlords, despite the captions reading "converts 50% of hammers" (cIV) and "converts 100% of hammers" (WL). yavoon, of course a town is better than a mine, for example, but then again, a town is pretty much better than anything. The problems are: it takes time to mature, whereas a mine is the same from the start; if it gets pillaged it's back to square one.

carl corey said:

Thanks, mice, for starting this thread. I thought of doing it myself, but was a little late and I kinda needed my "beauty" sleep. :grin:

One thing I remarked in that thread too: in vanilla cIV you get 1 beaker for 1 base hammer. No modifiers apply: no forge, factory, power, ironworks bonus. As you've already said, all of those apply in Warlords. This is true for building research, culture and wealth.

So in fact early on this strategy is as good in vanilla cIV as in Warlords, despite the captions reading "converts 50% of hammers" (cIV) and "converts 100% of hammers" (WL). yavoon, of course a town is better than a mine, for example, but then again, a town is pretty much better than anything. The problems are: it takes time to mature, whereas a mine is the same from the start; if it gets pillaged it's back to square one.

Click to expand...

haha well u hit the heart of the issue, a town is better than anything.

Maybe it's just too early in the morning, but what is the economic strategy?

Are you suggesting 'building' Research? Alternating between producing units and tech?

Curious, does "building" money, culture, and research send those hammers, notes, or beakers through the multiplier channels (a city with research in the build que has those beakers multiplied by libraries, etc.)?

I wouldn't consider this a "new type of economy", but it is certainly very helpful during the rapid expansion phase where your need to run your science at a very low level and beakers are hard to come by. While playing the game in the "Four Thousand Years" thread, the goal was to own as much land as possible. By about 1000 BC, I had 9 cities or so and my science was non-existant. By setting 6 cities or so to build "research", I was able to research techs at a very respectable rate. I think I researched COL in about 12 turns using nothing but hammers. It is definitely most powerful in the early parts of the game, but I would assume that it would be less than average later on when techs start to get expensive. And i certainly wouldn't recommend relying on this for an entire game. Sometimes you just need all of your cities for a war. But I do think this should be tested more so we can see just how useful it is.

bassist2119 said:

Curious, does "building" money, culture, and research send those hammers, notes, or beakers through the multiplier channels (a city with research in the build que has those beakers multiplied by libraries, etc.)?

Click to expand...

No...

In civ 4 Vanilla
2 unmultiplied Hammers=1 Flask/Gold/Culture... which is then multiplied by Banks, Libraries, Cathedrals, etc.

In civ4 Warlords
1 Hammer (after multipliing by Forges, Factories, etc.)=1 Flask/Gold/Culture... which is NOT multiplied by Banks, Libraries, Cathedrals.

Can you chop forests while building research and have it directly translate?