Uber Seafood Starts: Too Much of a Good Thing?

Occasionally I'll start a game with 4 or more seafood tiles in the capital's BFC. I usually play at Monarch.

I have noticed that, even if I play a civ that starts with Fishing, there is a point in time where I need to build workers, warriors, or something other than another workboat. My knee jerk reaction, however, is to work ALL of the seafood for all that lovely food and commerce. I admit it: I'm a seafood addict.

The problem? Usually, due to happiness issues, whipping, or the need to work hammer tiles, I can't actually USE more than 2-3 seafood tiles at a time in the early game (exception: when building workers/settlers). My capital tends to stay around size four, working two food tiles and two hammer tiles. So I end up actually slowing my expansion down by building the third, and especially fourth workboat.

My point? Remember that workboats are essentially a present investment of hammers for a future stream of food and commerce. Unlike a worker, who keeps going and going, the workboat is a one-shot tile improver. If you aren't going to be able to work all of the seafood, don't build that third or fourth workboat yet. Build other units to explore and expand.

On a side note, if you have a large investment in seafood, build a galley or trireme and put them on sea patrol or have them near your fisheries. Letting barbarians or AI civs pillage your seafood is an unmitigated disaster.

So true. Seafood heavy games are great for whipping though, and coastal cities with seafood in their borders get access to a worked resource faster than any other method if timed correctly.

I usually hold off on 3rd/4th seafoods if they're actually that many. I'm usually torn between making it into a commerce capitol with cottages (I mean, that's enough food there that you can work probably every remaining tile in the BFC as cottages and grow to be big enough to do so quickly!) and a GP farm. If there's mines too it usually becomes commerce though, as it can then build the needed improvements quickly and become one of those really stupidly powerful bureaucracy capitols.

Its often possible to pinch one of the seafood with a city three tiles away. (mutineer used to be a big fan of doing this when the map generator was too generous).

Here is an example (from my game in the Lonely Hearts Club:Mansa game). Kumbi Saleh in the first screenshot is "borrowing" a seafood from Timbuktu.

I think this goes with any food resource in the early game ... more than 3 is just too many without a substantial increase.

Similarly related to "too much seafood" (versus land food I guess) is the production investment necessary. Fishing boats cost 30 per in the form of a Workboat. Period.

Land resources, on the other hand, cost progressively less as the Worker performs more action. For example, if I have 3 land resources, the 60 cost of the Worker is spread across them for 20 per resource improvement. When a mine or other improvement is built, the 'cost' of each improvement then becomes 15 per ... and so forth and so on.

-- my 2

It's very rare that you need more than 2 food resources in the capital early on. And your thoughts on the one-shot deal is spot on.

There should be a coca leaf resource. It'd be +hammers and +food. Like a souped up cow resource. Just my two cents.

There should be a pufferfish resource that provides food but also has a random chance of killing your citizens.

Slobadog said:

There should be a pufferfish resource that provides food but also has a random chance of killing your citizens.

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Hahahaha, very nice resource.

Spread it out between two cities, that's what I would do.

How about a hemp resource that gives +1 hammer +1 happiness and a random chance of generating a great artist.

4 is overkill, but 3 is about perfect. You can always halt growth to let whip unhappiness die down by sticking a worker or settler in front of the queue, then finish him off by whip-overflowing into whatever you jumped queue for, and actual build that item faster, despite queue-jumping.

Of course I mostly play Monarch, so 5 is a magic number, and whipping to 3 leaves 3 citizens to work those 3 tiles and regrow back to cap very quickly.

With that amount of seafood you have to whip, and whip in a certain way. What you do is put a building or unit in the queue (but not a worker or settler). Let the city grow to max happiness, then change to a worker or settler. The turn before the worker or settler would cost one turn less to whip (for example more than 30 left for a worker on normal, but the next turn the amount left would be 30 or lower), switch back to the unit or building and let the city grow into unhappiness. Then switch back to the worker or settler and whip them, and you will get a hammer overflow of at least 30 into the building or unit you were producing. From a direct food-to-hammers perspective it is less efficient than direct whipping, but if you have that much extra food, the happiness is usually the limiting factor and the above method gives a better hammers-to-unhappiness ratio.

Calouste:

I had a start like this that I posted recently on the forums, and replayed about 20 times.

The thing about a seafood rich capital is that the population grows back at an incredibly fast rate, which means you can afford to whip much more generously. At the advice of another poster I was putting 1 turn into a settler, building X for 8 turns, and then whipping the settler for 3 pop, followed by another 1 turn settler build. The city grew at such a rate of speed that I often had to slow it down with a worker, because it almost immediately recovered to its happiness cap.

A seafood-rich capital is the closest thing to an old-school (Civ III) settler pump you can come to in Civ IV.

With such a sushi-deluxe capital I usually use the good commerce to go for mysticism->meditation->priesthood and overflow-whip the oracle for monarchy.
Then at 1 AD I look at my size 20 capital and !

Expansion focusses on health + tradable resources. After adding Moai & Colossus it's so much fun to party through golden ages especially if your leader is financial.

You have a few options imo:

1) Whip, whip, whip. If you go this route you probably don't need to improve all the food tiles

2) Work max tiles. Snaaty is a fan of this approach. Basically, grow your capital to max then build workers/settlers working your best tiles. I prefer this approach actually

3) Beeline monarchy, preferably via the oracle. Then grow capital like crazy. Depending on what the rest of your capital looks like (and your surrounding terrain) you may prefer to make it a commerce city or gpfarm. With that much food, I'd probably be thinking gpfarm with a plan to move my capital inland to a site that can make better use of bureaucracy

Sure you won't be growing your capital to size 10 quick, but that's fine-- whip the hell out of your rapidly growing pop, and max out those specialists. I find capitals without lots of food to be a real drag, personally.

Sabertooth said:

Calouste:

I had a start like this that I posted recently on the forums, and replayed about 20 times.

The thing about a seafood rich capital is that the population grows back at an incredibly fast rate, which means you can afford to whip much more generously. At the advice of another poster I was putting 1 turn into a settler, building X for 8 turns, and then whipping the settler for 3 pop, followed by another 1 turn settler build. The city grew at such a rate of speed that I often had to slow it down with a worker, because it almost immediately recovered to its happiness cap.

A seafood-rich capital is the closest thing to an old-school (Civ III) settler pump you can come to in Civ IV.

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Basically the same method

Yours builds a few additional workers, mine providers more hammers for buildings instead. And of course you can mix and match depending on your need for workers or buildings.

Calouste said:

With that amount of seafood you have to whip, and whip in a certain way. What you do is put a building or unit in the queue (but not a worker or settler). Let the city grow to max happiness, then change to a worker or settler. The turn before the worker or settler would cost one turn less to whip (for example more than 30 left for a worker on normal, but the next turn the amount left would be 30 or lower), switch back to the unit or building and let the city grow into unhappiness. Then switch back to the worker or settler and whip them, and you will get a hammer overflow of at least 30 into the building or unit you were producing. From a direct food-to-hammers perspective it is less efficient than direct whipping, but if you have that much extra food, the happiness is usually the limiting factor and the above method gives a better hammers-to-unhappiness ratio.

Click to expand...

How does this^ method compare to allowing the city to grow unhappy enough to whip-complete an expensive building like a library (either while slow building the library or while building units until you get enough hammers to complete the building in one shot after the 1 hammer is invested)?

I find that I crack the whip most often when building workers, settlers, and buildings -- the first two to minimize "non-growth" time, and the second to just finish it faster and create overflow.

If I'm rushing, for instance, I'll often let my city grow to 1 unhappy face, then queue up a library or other building that requires a 2- or 3-pop whip. I'll then whip and overflow into a military unit. Most of the time, I never have to deal with unhappiness and I essentially get a free building along the way. This is a great way to get your basic buildings out of the way, and yes, lots of seafood helps you regrow. The catch is having a high enough happy cap to actually use all that seafood.

Don't whip settlers and workers on a seafood start, just build them normally.

And build your second city in a high-production area to crank out military.

This is an interesting problem I've had to deal with several times and never really found an entirely satisfactory answer until the midddle game. In fact just having the 4 seafood doesn't define the problem adequately, you need to consider if the city has any good sources of hammers. If the city has 2 plains hills and a horse resource, then there are some useful places to sink the excess food that can give a lot of hammers, if it just has two plains forests then hammers will be a problem. The best way to deal with the huge potential food excess does depend on the other tiles available to the capital.

Let's size up the problem because I get the feeling certain people above aren't really appreciating the difficulty of getting the most out of this site in the early game.

City tile 2 food
Each Seafood +2 food (4 food minus 2 for citizen)
Lighthouse +1 food
Fish +1 food

So with 2 clams and 2 fish and a lighthouse we're getting 2 + 8 +4 + 2 = 16 surplus food at size 4. A size 4 city requires 28 food to grow (14 with a granary). A surplus of 16 food is enough to run a total of 8 further citizens. Obviously the Caste System and Hereditary Rule civics can eventually supply the necessary happiness and specialist slots. The problem is getting there in the most efficient manner.

Once you add a granary and a lighthouse this city is going to be able to grow 1 pop each turn and whipping is only going to be available once every 10 turns. Even a 3 pop whip is only going to use about 30% of the food available over the 10 turn whipping cycle! Most of the food therefore has to wasted (either by not working all the seafood tiles or not building the granary and lighthouse) or you will have to find a way to consume a lot of food such as working Plains hills, or running a lot of specialists.

Dealing with 2 or 3 seafood tiles is fairly easy but 4 and up is an exceptional problem. The immediate problem is happiness so Monarchy needs to be researched early. Next is finding a way to use as much of the food as possible. My preferred way to run specialists is to use building slots and continue to run Slavery but this city just has too much food for that to be a viable option until the late game when more types of building are available. We need to provide for 8 specialists and library,forge, courthouse and marketplace only provide 6. Access to two religions would allow 2 temples to fill the gap. So unless all those buildings are going to be built Code of Laws has to be a priority and then a switch to the Caste System.

There really can be a case of having too much of good thing and this city can be a big problem if its needs conflicts with the rest of the empire, which might not benefit from the Caste System in the early game. Later in the game with Globe Theatre and running Nationhood this could be an ideal drafting engine or with a forge and drydock it could whip out a fleet producing a galleon or frigate nearly every turn. It is undoubtably a great asset but needs to managed carefully to get the most out of it.