Whipping + Granaries

[futurehermit]

I want to start making better use of granaries and whipping in my games.

I played a start with Cathy last night and prioritized chopping granaries in my cities asap. I was pleased with the results. However, I still felt like I could've whipped more diligently.

Aside from whipping more, and continuing to emphasize granaries, however, I am also curious about basic whipping strategies. I'm not a hardcore micromanager and I'm never going to beancount hammers--it's just not my cup of tea. But I am wondering about some basic strategies you use. Is it a good idea, for example, to grow to size 6 then whip out a settler, regrowing building units/buildings, then whip another settler at size 6? Meanwhile another city is whipping workers at size 4?

What are some general whipping strategies that you use?

 

[DaveMcW]

The hardest part with whipping + granaries is limiting yourself to 1 whip per 10 turns.

Once you see the awesome production it gives, you're tempted to do it every time the whip button lights up.

Tip: Never kill a citizen who is working a resource or grassland mine.

 

[Kingjester1]

For me, in general, I use slavery to manage my happiness. I make sure to whip enough population so that my city is always growing to its happiness cap. Unless I'm specifically looking to get specialists in a city, I never really let my cities grow to their maximum size and leave them alone (at least in the early and mid game).

 

[Roxlimn]

Kind of need the beancounting.

Beancount the hammers so that you always whip away 2 pop points at once. Twice the production, same unhappiness. Need to beancount the food to produce the right amount of growth you want accounting for whipping. No sense growing to unhappiness or else being unable to whip Q10 turns because of lack of food.

You kinda get the hang of it after a while and should be able to eyeball the whip schedule without beancounting, but to max efficiency, beancounting at first is a good baseline.


For expansion, it depends on what's on the table. If I can get a 2 pop whip for a Settler at size 5 faster by working a few hammer tiles, that's the sensible thing to do. Sometimes, it's faster to grow to size 6 to do it, and sometimes it's not.

I make a habit of sending out Workers with Settlers, so for the second city at least, the Workers will be coming out of the capital queue, without whipping, generally. Depends on game state what comes next.

If I'm looking to wonderspam in the capital, I let the new city handle expansion of Workers and every Settler after the second one. If the new city is the Wonderspammer and/or GP, the capital continues to make Workers and Settlers.

 

[lilnev]

Rules of thumb:

Only whip for two or more pop.
Never whip before the previous unhappiness has worn off. That said, your ability to recover is a resource, and if you aren't whipping enough then you're wasting that resource.
Your cities be exactly as large as possible without unhappiness, and working your best tiles, as much of the time as possible.
If your best tiles generate "too much food", stall growth by building workers/settlers, and try to focus whip hammers into buildings/units.

Obviously there are exceptions. Monuments, workboats, and half-built granaries can be whipped for one as soon as possible, rather than growing the city to its happy-cap. Whips can be stacked if you need to build an army. You can grow into unhappiness to set up a triple- or quadruple-whip for a larger building. But they're good rules of thumb.

peace,
lilnev

 

[futurehermit]

Well, I generally always whip away at least 2 pop points at once and I have a general sense of regrowth rates. I generally don't whip low-food cities unless they hit unhappy. I'm just wondering more about really what to whip and at which pop. Is it best practice to whip everything? Settlers/workers? And at which pop is it a good idea to whip some of these things? Any tips appreciated.

 

[CivMonger]

By the sounds of things I don't whip nearly enough...

Apparently being the kind, generous, benevolent leader is out of fashion these days.

 

[phurph]

Just do enough bean counting so that you whip for at least two pop (when possible)

Always check overflow and if it's a substantial amount pour it into settlers/workers/wonders.

Don't be afraid to stack whip unhappiness especially early on (when palace gives bulk of commerce), and especially for workers/settlers/mil. Take care that it doesn't spiral out of control but whip unhappiness goes away.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Tip: Never kill a citizen who is working a resource or grassland mine.

There's only one exception to this rule: when whipping overflow into an accelerated build (by resource or trait).

For example, if you whip a non-Expansive Granary with 29 hammers invested for 2 pop into a Creative Library, your whip is worth a total of 89 , which is more than even some resources can keep up with.

--------

This probably seems backwards to most people, but I like to whip builds before a Worker or Settler.

For example, if the cap and population are 5 and I whip for 2pop 1 turn before growing to size 6, then on the next turn upon growing back to size 4, I'm at the cap again. If I then start a Worker or Settler, by the time it's finished, the city will be out of unhappiness and ready to grow again.

----

Speaking of Settlers, I prefer only to whip Settlers or Workers when Imperialistic/Expansive or in a Bureaucracy capital.

The main reason to whip is to convert into . Since building Settlers and Workers do that by default, I find it's hard to come out ahead even with a Granary.


-- my 2

 

[J-man]

Just curious: why should whip for at least 2 pop?
I always try to avoid whipping multi pop.

 

[UncleJJ]

The most important thing to add to a basic whipping strategy is a forge. That's 25% more hammers per pop regardless of whether you whip a unit or a building. A granary is essential for whipping (100% boost to food to hammer ratio) and a forge highly desireable (25% boost to hammers). Similarly if you're whipping buildings, including that forge , try to use Organised Religion.

The 1 whip in 10 turns is a long term rule that is often better ignored in the short term. In the middle game when the happiness cap has been raised by calendar resources it is often possible to accumulate -5 in whipping unhappiness while developing a city and then as the city grows to size 12 or so the need (and the efficency) of the whip drops off. So the accumulated unhappiness is worked off.

The gap between the population size and the happiness cap is a resource that can be used to whip faster than average for a while and experienced whippers use this to great effect. For instance if a key military technology is being researched I will build up the population in some of my cities and then once it is available whip them several times to turn the hammers stored in the population into units. This can often produce 2 or 3 times as many units as would be possible with normal production from hills and workshops and is enough to produce an overwhelming army. That whipping is usually coordinated with Vasslage or Theocracy in the early game to produce better quality units as well as higher quantities.

 

[thefais]

Just curious: why should whip for at least 2 pop?
I always try to avoid whipping multi pop.

I just learned to do this: Short version? More (overflow) hammers for the same amount of unhappiness. Plus using the overflow for any buildings that you get a bonus for is just gravy.

Long version? I'll let one of the more capable minds handle that one.

 

[DaveMcW]

There's only one exception to this rule: when whipping overflow into an accelerated build (by resource or trait).

For example, if you whip a non-Expansive Granary with 29 hammers invested for 2 pop into a Creative Library, your whip is worth a total of 89 , which is more than even some resources can keep up with.

That is not a valid exception.

 

[darrelljs]

The hardest part with whipping + granaries is limiting yourself to 1 whip per 10 turns.

Once you see the awesome production it gives, you're tempted to do it every time the whip button lights up.

Which is why the Aztecs are such a great civilization .

Darrell

 

[Ibian]

Having recently switched from representation+caste system to HR+slavery mode, i have not had much time to test what i am about to say but math and anecdotal evidence back it up so far.

My usual rule for a commerce city under the old setup was 4 food for growth and 12 base hammers (a forge only gives an extra hammer for every exactly 4 base hammers, 8 is too little and 16 takes up too much space).

I tried to convert it for use under slavery and here is what i came up with.

What to whip: Anything less than a grassland farm or grassland mine. Thats unimproved grassland, any kind of plain etc.

Before size 10, a farm is more hammer efficient than a grassland mine.
At size 10 they are equally efficient.
At size 12 a plains mine is as efficient as a farm.

This translates to a step by step program.

Before size 10, work farms instead of mines as much as possible. 12 surplus food is the goal here.
At size 10, switch the farms to grassland mines (not plains mines). If you dont have enough mines, you want 1 food for every 1.5 hammers. So if you are working for example 2 mines, you need 8 surplus food.
At size 11, if you still have enough food for whipping at this point, whip away farms instead of grassland mines given the choice.
At size 12, switch farms to plains mines.

After this you should never need to look at slavery again, except for special cases like whipping in a few universities so you can build Oxford and such.

This is all theory of course, in practice the terrain limits what is possible. Still, i have had good results with this method so far, and i am pretty much ignoring unhappiness since my capital is a troop spammer.

 

[UncleJJ]

Tip: Never kill a citizen who is working a resource or grassland mine.

This needs to be explained to make sense. Why ever would you not whip a citizen from a grassland hill or a weak resource (like a copper desert hill) in a size 5 city? It obviously depends on the quality of the resource and the size of the city as to whether your tip applies... so it's not much use

A grassland farm (and any other 3 food tile) is much more productive than a grassland hill for a size 5 city, (pre-Railroad and pre-Biology). My spreadsheet shows that a 1 pop whip for a size 5 city has a food to hammers exchange rate of 1 food = 2 hammers. A grassland farm is therefore twice as productive as a grassland hill and should be worked in preference to the hill.

A better tip is to avoid whipping away parts of your food engine although even this is not a hard and fast rule. My definition of the city's food engine is all the tiles that produce 3 food or more and it is this that produces growth and hence fuels whipping (and feeds specialists and runs mines and other food sink tiles).

 

[Ibian]

My spreadsheet shows that a 1 pop whip for a size 5 city has a food to hammers exchange rate of 1 food = 2 hammers. A grassland farm is therefore twice as productive as a grassland hill and should be worked in preference to the hill.

Not quite. Only the surplus food matters.

2 farms is worth 4 hammers.

A farm and a mine is worth 3 hammers.

So a farm is 33% more efficient than a mine at this point.

 

[Solon70]

I always try to whip at least 2 pop and get as much overflow as I can out of it. The overflow makes up for the fact that your city won't be running at 100% once you whip away some of the citizens.

It's always useful to keep your eyes open for units you can build for one turn and then whip 2 pop for maximum overflow. In fact, sometimes I lower my production by a hammer or two for that one turn just so I won't turn it into a 1 pop whip.

HR allows you to really, really abuse the whip as long as you're producing units. In a recent game I used this trick to build the Maoi Statues in a city with only a couple base hammers, by whipping unit after unit and putting the overflow into the statues. The whip weariness is irrelevant since each unit you whip raises the happy cap, although obviously those units are all stuck at home for a while.

 

[Johan^^]

The most important thing to add to a basic whipping strategy is a forge. That's 25% more hammers per pop regardless of whether you whip a unit or a building. A granary is essential for whipping (100% boost to food to hammer ratio) and a forge highly desireable (25% boost to hammers). Similarly if you're whipping buildings, including that forge , try to use Organised Religion.

And this is why i like Bismarck cheap forges and granaries paired with cheap workers --> great early game. If this aint good enough for you to win the game, then the lategame UU should do the job

 

[DaveMcW]

This needs to be explained

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=243558

I agree with your tip about not killing off grassland farms. But you should only build grassland farms in cities with the happiness to bear sustained whipping.