Units pre-building

This thread was for multiplayer purpose in first instance but i think this may be good for some strategies for single player mode as well.

How about pre-building units?

For example, i want spearmen. I choose X cities to build X spearmen. But at 1 turn left i choose something else to build. I can rechoose it later btw. So, if i really want these spearmen someday, i can change production to spearmen later and finish them in 1 turn.

The nice advantage to this is gold economy. Why keep units on ground when you can keep them virtually in cities with 1 turn left of build?

Ok now i didnt try other situations like : how much time can you keep this on ice, how many kind of units this apply, and the possibility of losing the production for units who need ressources if someone pillage it before you can finish them.

I'm thinking about this strategy to ''hide'' the real power from the demo screen (# soldiers) from your opponents and to save some gold through turns.

Unless the threat is very clear and you HAVE to show him some units to discourage him to attack you.

Any thoughts? (And sorry for my bad english)

Edit : This seems to work for an infinite amount of turn. You can also put hammers from a spearman pre-built in a new pikeman available with the discovering of civil service, making this pikeman faster to build, instead of finishing the spearman, paying extra unit maintenance for some turns and upgrade it. This works for every obsolete pre-built units.

This is nice for Great People too. If you need many GPs for mass bulbing you can pre-build and spawn them in the same turn.

In conclusion, you can therically spawn 1 type of each units 1 at a time for each cities. For example, if you pre-build a swordman, a spearman and an horseman in 4 cities, you can produce a total of 12 units in 3 turns. This make you save a lot of gold in units maintenance for a good amount of turns.

Nothing really new after all but applying this strategy correctly can make you save gold.

Edit 2: I made some tests for units on quick speed. Actually hammers stocked in the unit built begin to decrease at a rate of 1 hammer per turn after 10 turns. Same for building. Not sure about wonders.

In 1 of my tests i built a spearman, a swordman and horseman in 3-4 turns from 1 city. Took me 17 turns after the spearman at 1 turn built. I lost 17-10=7 hammers but i managed to save a total of 25 gold if i calculate 1 gold per turn per unit in ancient era. I got a 3,5:1 gold/hammer ratio which is inneficient. A ratio of at least 7:1 would have been better. But what follow is better.

You can actually save maintenance gold per unit per turn per city from letting a unit suspended for 10 turns in a row. If you have 5 cities for example, you can save as much as 5 gold per turn and maybe more if unit maintenance increase through ages and/or if you manage to build units on a regular basis. It's because you always keep virtually 1 unit in each city for each turns, and without losing production.

In edit #1 i said you can pre-build newer units coming up with almost completed obsolete units. This is true if you think about keeping it in the main production of city for the turn when tech is discovered. If you do not you lose the production.

Critical when you get iron for swordmen(pre-build with warriors), pikemen(pre-build with spearmen), Knights(pre-build with chariot archers), Lancers(pre-build with horsemen), etc.

Riflemen is tricky because 3 units become obsolete at the same time. Longswordmen,pikemen and musketmen. Choose musketmen if you discover rifles the hard way. Choose longswordmen if you bulb through it. I didn't go any farther for another type of units but the pattern is the same.

Last thing i discovered made me smile. You can pre-build units that need ressources BEFORE having the ressource available. You need at least an already worked ressource for this trick.

For example, i possess 2 iron for my empire. I build 2 swordmen in 2 first cities. When i reach 1 turn left, i stop building them and i choose something else to build. Then i begin 2 other swordmen in 2 other cities. You can do that because they are not finished and not being built meanwhile in 2 first cities.

Well this don't do a thing if you dont connect to another source of iron. But when you connect 2 more iron ressources, you just have to finish the swordmen pre-built in the 2 first cities. You can save a lot of turns by doing that!

If a swordman takes for example 10 turns to build for all cities, it can take actually a total of 20 turns to build 4 of them even if you just connected the 3rd and 4th iron at 1 turn before finishing all of them. In fact, you build in 1 turn what normally take 10 more turns to finish. Cool isn't it?

In conclusion, you can lose hammer for letting production on ice, but if you manage to dont take more than 10 turns of waiting for each item you can save a lot of gold. You can also pre-build units with obsolete units, and you can pre-build units before having the ressource but you need at least 1 sample of the ressource.

Nice tactic, worth using in almost every game.
Playing solo ICS games, I enjoy pre-building settlers in times I desperetaly need happiness. And then pumping them up once I resolve the issue.

Yes it's a good strategy if you want to be attacked. If you don't want to be attacked, it's a bad idea. I also think you should make sure to finish the unit before they go obsolete.

avl8: Good idea, I hadn't thought about that yet. Much better than Paeanblack's barb storage tank

It's a valid strategy. You can also do things such hold back a half-built unit just before it goes obsolete, then carry over the production onto the next tier unit which you'd really like. One problem is really the micromanagement and seeing your production get lost if you forget too many turns. The other problem is that the AI adjusts the diplomacy based on your army strength, so what you're saving in maintenance can be lost in diplomacy.

alpaca said:

I also think you should make sure to finish the unit before they go obsolete.

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Yeah i'm not sure about this one. What can you make save more gold vs turns? Upgrading units can be better than transfering the production to the new unit available. I'm thinking about Germans for example.

But in the same way you can begin the production of better units before you reached the tech.

DaveGold said:

One problem is really the micromanagement and seeing your production get lost if you forget too many turns.

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Not sure again. How much time can you hold the production unfinished? Does somebody know about this?

Wow, that's a really good idea! Never thought to do that!

if the unit becomes obsolete you lose all the production that you put into it though so remember to build them before they go obsolete, even if you sell them immediately, so that you are not wasting production. but a good tactic

if the unit becomes obsolete you lose all the production that you put into it though so remember to build them before they go obsolete, even if you sell them immediately, so that you are not wasting production. but a good tactic

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If you're building an old unit when it upgrades then the production is transferred to the new unit. I'm not sure what happens to unfinished items outside the queue. This is getting pretty technical now so we probably need someone who's modded this stuff to tell us exactly.

DaveGold said:

If you're building an old unit when it upgrades then the production is transferred to the new unit. I'm not sure what happens to unfinished items outside the queue. This is getting pretty technical now so we probably need someone who's modded this stuff to tell us exactly.

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Every hammers of buildings/wonders/units you enterprise to build are stocked if you dont finish them. This work for new units available as well.

I don't have the game with me right now, but let's make an example.

Let's say a spearman cost 50 hammers and a pikeman cost 80 hammers. You put 45 hammers in the spearman and stop production on turn 40. You discover civil service on turn 60, and you wait more. On turn 100, you decide to build a pikeman in the city you pre-built the spearman. The pikeman will now cost 35 hammers, and you saved 61 turns of maintenance of that spearman. If you wait longer and you discover rifles, and it cost for example 120 hammers, well the application is the same.

Keeping a unit unfinished in a front city is good because if a war occurs you just have to finish it to add him at your army.

Besides, you can unfinish every thing at 1 turn left and keep this unfinished for a very long time.

This si nice if you have nothing to do and build a wonder you don't really want and you prefer more money. Stop building it at 1 turn left and wait for another civ to finish it. Take the failure gold.

Pretty useless for buildings but units and maybe sometimes wonders it's somewhat interesting.

pickle said:

if the unit becomes obsolete you lose all the production that you put into it though so remember to build them before they go obsolete, even if you sell them immediately, so that you are not wasting production. but a good tactic

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In civ4 if you wait too much you can lose the production.

Edit : I think there is an exception with the discovery of gunpowder. I don't remember if pikemen and longswordmen are ''merged'' to only be gunpowder units (or maybe it's only at the discovery of rifles?)

I will make some tests tonite to see if some hammers can be lost that way.

Besides, you can unfinish every thing at 1 turn left and keep this unfinished for a very long time.

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It's not a very long time, with buildings or units. If you forget about it then it certainly is lost. I repeatedly found this with the national epic, which stopped building when I founded a new city without a monument and then the all the production was lost by the time I actually realised it was never finished.

DaveGold said:

It's not a very long time, with buildings or units. If you forget about it then it certainly is lost. I repeatedly found this with the national epic, which stopped building when I founded a new city without a monument and then the all the production was lost by the time I actually realised it was never finished.

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The wonder stay in gray and you just can't click on it to finish the production until every city got his monument. Maybe i never wait ''long time'' enough to realise you can actually lose all the hammer put in it. I have to find this to be more accurate in my OP.

A ''long time'' may be short for some players.

Made some tests and i arrived with nice conclusions. Very useful. See EDIT #2

Also useful when used with Barracks.

Pre-build the units to within 1 turn (they need to be different obviously), then build your barracks and finish off your units.

You still get all your barracky goodness but don't need to pay any maintenance until you're actually using it.

Tabarnak said:

Every hammers of buildings/wonders/units you enterprise to build are stocked if you dont finish them. This work for new units available as well.

I don't have the game with me right now, but let's make an example.

Let's say a spearman cost 50 hammers and a pikeman cost 80 hammers. You put 45 hammers in the spearman and stop production on turn 40. You discover civil service on turn 60, and you wait more. On turn 100, you decide to build a pikeman in the city you pre-built the spearman. The pikeman will now cost 35 hammers, and you saved 61 turns of maintenance of that spearman. If you wait longer and you discover rifles, and it cost for example 120 hammers, well the application is the same.

Keeping a unit unfinished in a front city is good because if a war occurs you just have to finish it to add him at your army.

Besides, you can unfinish every thing at 1 turn left and keep this unfinished for a very long time.

This si nice if you have nothing to do and build a wonder you don't really want and you prefer more money. Stop building it at 1 turn left and wait for another civ to finish it. Take the failure gold.

Pretty useless for buildings but units and maybe sometimes wonders it's somewhat interesting.

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podcast talked about this a few episodes ago. in cIV you had a certain amount of turns with no penalty, I can't remember if it was 10 or 50 or whatever but after those turns were over you lost 2% of the production per turn (so in most cases 1 hammer per turn). I doubt that this was implemented in ciV but haven't tested it yet.

DaveGold said:

It's not a very long time, with buildings or units. If you forget about it then it certainly is lost. I repeatedly found this with the national epic, which stopped building when I founded a new city without a monument and then the all the production was lost by the time I actually realised it was never finished.

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If you purchase the needed building for a national wonder when you create a city you will not loose the building of the national wonder. I have also gone back after a turn and purchased the building (after I remembered that i forgot to do it on the previous turn). I then went back to the national wonder producing city and added the wonder back in and the produced hammer amount was still there. I have not tested how long you can wait before you can do this and I almost forgot which city was producing it. It would be nice to see if production in one city on the wonder could be transfered to another city you want to build it when this happens.

Tabarnak said:

Let's say a spearman cost 50 hammers and a pikeman cost 80 hammers. You put 45 hammers in the spearman and stop production on turn 40. You discover civil service on turn 60, and you wait more. On turn 100, you decide to build a pikeman in the city you pre-built the spearman. The pikeman will now cost 35 hammers, and you saved 61 turns of maintenance of that spearman. If you wait longer and you discover rifles, and it cost for example 120 hammers, well the application is the same.

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What you also must take into account is the lost use of the hammers for all those turns. (The opportunity cost, if you will.)

The loss of the thing you could have spent those 45 hammers on 61 turns earlier is the real cost of the strategy. Maybe it is worth it under certain circumstances, but I wouldn't think of it as being a free option.

45 hammers early is generally worth a lot more than 45 hammers 61 turns later.

diz2 said:

What you also must take into account is the lost use of the hammers for all those turns. (The opportunity cost, if you will.)

The loss of the thing you could have spent those 45 hammers on 61 turns earlier is the real cost of the strategy. Maybe it is worth it under certain circumstances, but I wouldn't think of it as being a free option.

45 hammers early is generally worth a lot more than 45 hammers 61 turns later.

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In fact it wasnt a good example and i wrote this when it was hypothetically possible. But yes opportunity cost are the right words.

With some testings we can see now that depending of the speed you play you have a certain amount of time before you begin to lose hammers.

The pre-building from obsolete units to new ones is probably the easiest to do, but only when you build them in a short span of time before they become really obsolete.

Other things explained are more micro sensitive and you need to be careful to don't lose production.

i played a multiplayer game with tabarnak, attacked him and got slaughtered ;/