Hammer Overflow in 3.1.9

After reading vale's Hammer Overflow guide, I searched around for abit and weren't able to find any posts concerning hammer overflow after patch 3.1.9 where it was supposedly nerfed. Is there no gold conversion for hammer overflow now?

The most expensive military unit (not counting ICBM) is 260 hammers, does this mean there's no reason for production cities to have more? Do hammers beyond 260 simply disappear if you don't plan to build any buildings or wonders in that city? Can you make all those workshops into other improvements?

I believe (not sure on this) that the hammer-to-gold conversion is completely gone. So you can't do things like tons of forest chops while building a wall as protective to get a lot of gold. So you can only get the overflow hammers equal to what your building, and any extra is a waste.

I remember hearing about this listening to an episode of PolyCast but I can't remember which one. I think it was TMIT that talked about it. I'm pretty sure this is it though.

I think they got rid of the modifiers for overflow.

So, take a case where you're protective with stone, and are building walls (50 hammers). You put 5 hammers in, and then whip it. You also chop a forest that turn.

So, your walls this off-turn end up with something like 190 "hammers"/50. What happens is you get the wall, you get 50 hammers (/3 since they convert back to base hammers) as a carry-over to your next build. Then there's still 90 left. I think what was changed was you used to get 90 gold for it, so it could be very profitable for you to do all this stuff at once. However, now, I think they changed it so you only get 30 gold from it (you get the pre-modifier amount).

I believe they put a cap on how many hammers will be converted to gold via overflow.

Cjreynol said:

I believe (not sure on this) that the hammer-to-gold conversion is completely gone. So you can't do things like tons of forest chops while building a wall as protective to get a lot of gold. So you can only get the overflow hammers equal to what your building, and any extra is a waste.

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Upon reading the patch changes, I don't think they're comepletely gone.

3.1.9 Patch Notes said:

Build-specific production modifiers are no longer counted for overflow gold calculations

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To me that just means you remove the modifiers from the excess hammers.

Cjreynol said:

I remember hearing about this listening to an episode of PolyCast but I can't remember which one. I think it was TMIT that talked about it. I'm pretty sure this is it though.

Click to expand...

Aha, thanks. From the date of the patch, I figured out what it's episode 79: "Make Some Noise" in season 3 (23rd June 2009) Available here: http://civcomm.weplayciv.com/polycast/polycast/season3.php just scroll down abit.
Listening to it now, they don't seem to go into the exact mechanics though.

UWHabs said:

I think they got rid of the modifiers for overflow.

So, take a case where you're protective with stone, and are building walls (50 hammers). You put 5 hammers in, and then whip it. You also chop a forest that turn.

So, your walls this off-turn end up with something like 190 "hammers"/50. What happens is you get the wall, you get 50 hammers (/3 since they convert back to base hammers) as a carry-over to your next build. Then there's still 90 left. I think what was changed was you used to get 90 gold for it, so it could be very profitable for you to do all this stuff at once. However, now, I think they changed it so you only get 30 gold from it (you get the pre-modifier amount).

Click to expand...

Thanks for clarifying. This is what my limited testing and knowledge suggest aswell.

Nares said:

I believe they put a cap on how many hammers will be converted to gold via overflow.

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There's no cap mentioned in the patch changes.

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Putting that aside, what I really want to know is: Can a city reach a point where it will continually produce units each turn without taking 2 turns to produce one at any point. Let's take the Modern Armor at 240 hammer production cost at the example. If you have a Forge, Factory and power in a city, you need a base hammer production of 120. If you have 120 carried over from a previous build you get 480 hammers total (120 base hammer, 120 carried over, +100% from buildings). This will complete the unit with 240 hammers to spare. Max 120 of those are carried over and the last 120 will lose 100% from the modifiers and give you 60 gold.

On a standard sized map, 120 base hammers is stretching it abit, even in the endgame. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it probably won't happen that often.

Thanks for helping me clarify this, I was afraid my cities were inefficient and possibly losing hammers/gold.

Quote:
Originally Posted by 3.1.9 Patch Notes
Build-specific production modifiers are no longer counted for overflow gold calculations
To me that just means you remove the modifiers from the excess hammers.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cjreynol
I remember hearing about this listening to an episode of PolyCast but I can't remember which one. I think it was TMIT that talked about it. I'm pretty sure this is it though.

Aha, thanks. From the date of the patch, I figured out what it's episode 79: "Make Some Noise" in season 3 (23rd June 2009) Available here: http://civcomm.weplayciv.com/polycas...st/season3.php just scroll down abit.
Listening to it now, they don't seem to go into the exact mechanics though.

Click to expand...

Glad I could help, and that seems to make more sense. I think you might have to do some code diving to find out the exact mechanics.

There is a bug relating to overflow in 3.19. In the patch notes, it's clear they intended to remove the multipliers from overflow gold. Overflow gold is the gold that is given when the overflow hammers exceeds the actual hammer cost of the thing that was built. E.g. If a building cost 20 and you ended up with 30 overflow, only 20 of the overflow would remain as overflow and the other 10 would get converted to gold. It seems in most cases after the 3.19 patch, the overflow that is meant to get converted to gold just disappears instead. In some cases, like huge amounts of overflow due to high base hammers and building repeated workboats in a high production modifier city, the gold overflow still seems to work. rolo knows more about it so hopefully if he sees this thread he can shed some light on it.

In general, after the 3.19 patch, I avoid ever causing overflow that would exceed the hammer value of the build. Annoyingly, this means it's wasting hammers to ever rush a warrior because the overflow will exceed the value of the warrior. obsolete will tell you Firaxis "messed" it up here. At the same time as preventing the cheese of stone Protective wall chops, they made more micromanagement necessary by breaking overflow gold. Again, as obsolete would say, overflow gold is still broken after the patch, only now moreso and in the other direciton.

PieceOfMind said:

There is a bug relating to overflow in 3.19. In the patch notes, it's clear they intended to remove the multipliers from overflow gold. Overflow gold is the gold that is given when the overflow hammers exceeds the actual hammer cost of the thing that was built. E.g. If a building cost 20 and you ended up with 30 overflow, only 20 of the overflow would remain as overflow and the other 10 would get converted to gold. It seems in most cases after the 3.19 patch, the overflow that is meant to get converted to gold just disappears instead. In some cases, like huge amounts of overflow due to high base hammers and building repeated workboats in a high production modifier city, the gold overflow still seems to work. rolo knows more about it so hopefully if he sees this thread he can shed some light on it.

In general, after the 3.19 patch, I avoid ever causing overflow that would exceed the hammer value of the build. Annoyingly, this means it's wasting hammers to ever rush a warrior because the overflow will exceed the value of the warrior. obsolete will tell you Firaxis "messed" it up here. At the same time as preventing the cheese of stone Protective wall chops, they made more micromanagement necessary by breaking overflow gold. Again, as obsolete would say, overflow gold is still broken after the patch, only now moreso and in the other direciton.

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Obsolete would be in good company in this situation

alexman said:

It is definitely a bug, although the effect on game play is minor. Sorry about that.

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alexman said:

Yes, those were the intentions, but we thought we were cleaning up the UP code...

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DanF gives a brief explanation of how things work in terms of hammer overflow in 3.19 in here, if someone is interested.

Thanks for the link, Rolo. I'm not quite sure I understand it though. The way I read it he says that "normal" excess hammers get converted into gold (minus modifiers), but excess hammers from whipping or chopping do not. Is this correct?

Yes, that is basically correct