Size 12 Plan: More Workers, Less Courthouses!

Here is a letter I recently sent to our Domestic Leader, DaveShack, stating my opposition to the current courthouse craze:


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Dave,

I am against the rushing of courthouses at this stage of the game. Let me state my reasoning.

1. I would like to wait to rush corruption-reducing improvements until we see exactly how these cities will fare under Democracy. With Smith's nearing completion, we are almost at the time to consider a switch to this goverment form.

2. I would like you to instead consider growth improvements such as Harbors or Granaries for these cities as they could then be used temporarily to increase our flagging workforce. We only have 33 workers for 40-odd cities. We need many more.

My ideas for workers go far beyond terrain improvement. Upon looking at the save, I noticed that there are many cities that are growing every 10-20 turns, yet have fully improved tiles within their radius. These cities can grow faster by sending workers to join the city. For instance:

a. The city of Skunkworks is Size 8 and has 4 irrigated plain squares that are currently unused. By sending four workers there, we can increase that city's commerce and production substantially.

b. The city of Neapolis is Size 7 and has 5 sea squares just waiting to be claimed for its harbor. Once again that is an immediate 10 commece being added to the city with no risk of starvation(more if it has a Market...I cant remember).

There are several other cities that lie close to one of our capitals that can benefit from this assistance. And the best place for the help to come from would be from the far reaches of Quirinial and Esquiline Provinces in the form of workers.

Please think this over, and post here if you have any questions regarding this idea.

Thank you for your time.


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This is a little thing called the Size 12 Plan, which many DG2 vets will remember. I think I have given some good examples of how it works, but if you have any questions(and I am sure you will) please address them here.

I thought I fought this plan in favor of continued warmongering last time.

Still, I generally agree. We've got enough spearman, pikes, and courthouses running around. If we were to build some workers, we could substantially increase output in the next 10-20 turns.

I am STRONGLY in support of this. It will be difficult to implement, as the core of the plan requires many, many workers to be built, only to join a new city. Essentially, we are implementing a food stamps plan for the poorer cities!

If we can do this, and all the governors buy into it and accept short-term losses for long-term gains, our nation will see a nice boost in overall productivity.

-- Ravensfire

Seems good, but what about the ultra-corrupt cities at the far end of the Esquiline peninsula? They're producing 2 shields and loosing 5 or 6 to corruption. I'd prefer if we at least built courthouses there.

DZ seeks to reuse his old plan from DG2, eh? Sounds just as good as it did last time to me. Full steam ahead! In fact, Memphis could be a prime Worker producer, as could Aureus if someone would irrigate it as I have been asking for the past month.

Originally posted by Bacon King
Seems good, but what about the ultra-corrupt cities at the far end of the Esquiline peninsula? They're producing 2 shields and loosing 5 or 6 to corruption. I'd prefer if we at least built courthouses there.

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I would be behind setting Quirnial up as a worker farm as long as the executive branch can get behind the rushing of these workers so no worker takes longer than two turns.

If you do this you immediately solve both problems, becuase if the Quirnial cities are quickly reduced, corruption will no longer have any effect. (Worker production will leave the city with no laborers to produce shields that would be taken by corruption)

Then the reduced cities can return to their regular build queues and we will be in a democracy before the first courthouse gets built, leaving plenty of time for mayors/governors to realize they may not need a courthouse.

Thanks for the quick response, everyone. I am glad to see that there is some interest in this plan.

@Octavian - There also seems to be some warmongering a-brewin' in Falcon's new thread. I still think we can pull off this plan and produce some Knights in our most productive cities.

@Ravensfire - Actually, I prefer to look at it as people from the far reaches heading to the big city(where the jobs are). Also, buy-in from the Governors is very important. I am hoping that they will allow the short-term sacrifices to their domain by helping to enhance cities closest to our two capitals.

@Bacon King - The idea would be that these more corrupt cities would produce workers that are currently working corrupt land anyway. Therefore, lowering the population won't really affect treasury or production. These workers can then be sent to places they are needed, like harbor towns near our capitals. Keep in mind, this is not a plan to write these cities off for good; it is only a way to make the best of our corruption until a better form of government comes along.

@Noldodan _ I am glad to see you back on board for another round of Size 12 Mayhem. However, I would like to see cities like Memphis and Aureus used to their full potential while relief comes from the outskirt cities. My hope is that some of our core cities will start work on more military units just in case someone tries to catch us off guard.

@deshelbr - I like your idea for several reasons.

1. We have the treasury to sustain quite a few 36g(or less) transactions.

2. We still have 25-30 units to give in our unit support.

3. Building workers before and during Anarchy sounds like the ultimate way to make use of this non-productive time. This of course will depend on whether we plan to switch to Democracy or not.


Thanks, everyone. Keep 'em coming!

Here is a controversial idea.

If we plan for war we can capture the neccessary people to put in our cities and also increase our land holdings/production too.
This way we are not redistributing people but actually increaing our citizenry.

Hmmm... I am a little... reluctant with this plan.

Quirnial is desperately corrupt. Adultery and public drunkeness run through the streets. Or at least, production is low, as is commerce and food production.

I may dedicate 4 or so cities as worker farms, if you wish. What I will do, is look at a city's potential. If it cannot produce a minimum of 30 sheilds after a factory and coal plant, it will become a worker factory. I will look into the plan, but it very much rips up all plans I had for this province this term.

GBM, this a short term idea and would not interfere with your future plans. What I would like to see from yourself and Bacon King is a temporary halt to courthouse production until we can better assess our situation under Democracy.

I think the best thing to do would be to switch any city producing a courthouse to a Harbor(if applicable) or a Granary. This will enhance the growth of these cities so the loss of population would hit them too hard. Then, with DaveShack's blessing, I would like to see as many of those improvements rushed as possible(especially the Harbors), so that we can get started on this program.

Let's send the adulterers and drunks to where the better jobs are, Governor. It will help our nation in the long run.

Why don't the mayors and governors discuss (in thier province threads) which cities could switch to workers and how long 1 worker from those cities would take (without rushing). Then the governors could post summaries here describing how many workers, when they would be produced, and how much it would cost to rush them (after 1 turn of production).

Then we can see if this would be worth it or not.

I would fully support this Idea.

We can use the cities with the greatest food input as Worker Factories and use them to Join of the cities below the size 12 mark. Cities that have a 1-3 turns growth rate should not need settlers. But for ones with 5-7 Turns would need to have workers join the city.

Capitoline province is currently devoted to building infrastructure in its cities. Only Noshuret is free to build workers but since it was deemed imprudent at this juncture to build a settler there I don't see how it would be prudent to build workers instead.

We're sitting on 1600g we could be using to rush those courthouses...

Ok, (most of) Esquiline will be loosing courthouses in build ques and building workers now, I'm getting the exact build ques ready now.

@Bacon King - Thanks for your support of this plan. Please remember to first switch to a Harbor or Granary where there are too many shields accumulated. You can also request a rush for these improvements if they are near completion.

@donsig - Using all of of gold to rush courthouses would not be the best idea at this point, as most of them will cost 250-300g to rush. And for what benefit? If anything, we should wait until we are in Democracy so the increased production can save us a little gold. Besides, do you remember a time in DG2 when you ambushed me in the chat when I tried to do the same thing for less gold? I can find it and post it here if you'd like. And that was for only one Courthouse...we rush 5-6 courts now and we are tapped for cash.

However, I have no problem with rushing an Aqueduct because that is growth. It would be nice for you to enlist one of your cities for this cause since Capitoline stands to benefit from this proposal the most. I certainly don't expect you to do so, however.

@zorven - Oh, it would be worth it. Take the red shields/commerce from 8-10 Esquiline population points and place them in Skunkworks and Neapolis(benefits detailed in my first post) and you will see only two examples. There are several more.

Originally posted by Donovan Zoi

@donsig - Using all of of gold to rush courthouses would not be the best idea at this point, as most of them will cost 250-300g to rush. And for what benefit? If anything, we should wait until we are in Democracy so the increased production can save us a little gold. Besides, do you remember a time in DG2 when you ambushed me in the chat when I tried to do the same thing for less gold? I can find it and post it here if you'd like. And that was for only one Courthouse...we rush 5-6 courts now and we are tapped for cash.

However, I have no problem with rushing an Aqueduct because that is growth. It would be nice for you to enlist one of your cities for this cause since Capitoline stands to benefit from this proposal the most. I certainly don't expect you to do so, however.

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I wasn't suggesting we use all our gold to rush courthouses. I was merely trying to highlight the fact that we have 1600g accumulated which does us no good what ever by sitting around in the treasury.

How does Capitoline stand to benefit the most from this plan? The only city in Capitoline not building needed infrastructure (or a wonder) is Noshuret. Should the production of knights cease to make workers?

No, I do not remember ambushing you in the chat. Sounds pretty dramatic. It would be fun to see that though if you can find it!

donsig,

I agree that we should use our treasury for something. I would prefer to use it on Harbors and Granaries for now, as they are less expensive.

Capitoline stands to benefit the most because it contains many cities that could easily receive added population right now. Neapolis has five sea squares that are unused. Penguinadua has a mined grassland that isn't being used, and possibly another unused tile. Ingolemondor(is that yours?) may be another key city if it can build an aqueduct.

I will have to do some digging for that chat, but it will be fun to relive old memories. I don't know if "dramatic" is the word but it was interesting.

Howdy all,

After a crushing week at work, I can finally take time to fully comprehend the idea behind this thread and respond intelligently to it.

The underlying objective of the plan is to transfer population from the unproductive corners of the realm to the highly productive core cities. The production of workers is incidental to this goal. We don't need to produce workers in the productive cities, since they would just be joined immediately anyway. The high production cities should continue to build infrastructure to enable the higher population to be used effectively.

Some of the workers need to be used to complete at least 12 tiles of improvements in each future metropolis before being joined back to a city. It is also important to have a large worker force for when Steam Power is discovered, to quickly rail the entire worked area.

The idea of rushing workers would have merit in the case of the ones which will be joined immediately -- financially that would work like giving a cash loan that is repaid in gpt.

Another thing we can do with high corruption towns is to convert some residents to specialists, to the point of zero growth in food respects. IIRC the beakers produced by scientists are not subject to corruption effects, nor are the taxes collected by taxmen. Beakers and taxes from specialists may even accumulate during periods of anarchy (not sure on that one, usually I'm hitting enter like mad through a period of anarchy... )

Even after implementing this plan, there will be some locations where corruption will remain rampant, and which would receive some benefit from courthouses. In those locations, the benefit from a courthouse will outweigh the benefits of moving the population to a higher production location.

A followup post will contain some specifics. edit: i'm the 1st one back here, so will just append to the same post...

The towns which would benefit from a courthose (based on shield production alone) are shown in this image. (except for the ones with no corruption, obviously... )

OHhhhhh, there is something I never thought about. Changing the laborers to scientists and tax collectors until the corruption problem goes away. And the trade off is zero growth for the city which won't really benefit from high population right now anyway.

So Malvern Hill and Cold Harbor in Quirnial are both size 3, highly corrupt, and building temples. They would both sustain zero growth with one laborer being switched to a specialist.

From what everyone is saying here I think they should both have one laborer each changed to a scientist. At some point the Temple with be built, rushing or otherwise. Then we switch production to workers which will move inland for the Size 12 Plan and reduce both cities to size 1. Then the nation will go to Democracy and we can reassess if these cities need courthouses.

I like this.

OK, I have decided on Queue changes for my province (Quirnial)

Malvern Hill and Cold harbour will build non-stop workers for this T/C after they finish their temple rushes.

Every other city will build 1 or 2 workers between every improvement until their queues are exhausted, after which they will pump out workers non-stop. When the city is size 1 and wont grow before the next worker, it will switch to a knight, to gain back productivity again.

Speak now, the T/C is very soon.