For how long do you whip? (Slavery)

[AveiMil]

Hello,

I’m new here and more or less a beginner or perhaps intermediate at Civilization 4. I’m not totally new to the series and have lots of experience in strategy gaming in general but I’m definitely not a strong Civ4 player yet.

I’ve been playing a few games on Monarch, Small World, Terra, Normal (or epic) speed with 4 AI’s (+me) lately. I’m using patch 3.19 and since the last game I’ve loaded the BTS Better AI Mod.

I enjoy a challenge so playing a lower difficulty level than at least Prince and winning seems like a waste of time to me. I’d much rather loose until I get better on Monarch. Since about a week or two ago I’ve lost 7 out of the 7 games I’ve played and I’m now on my 8th game.

Anyway, I always wondered what the Civic slavery was actually good for. In prior games I never used it for much besides “emergency drafting”. I always (due to lack of understanding of the mechanics) thought it was not good to de-populate my cities. Now I’ve discovered how much of a difference whipping can make, especially in the early game to build wonders or additional early settlers/workers.

However, I might have gone a bit overboard on the whole whipping idea and I think I now might be using it too much. In my latest game I was still whipping at 1400AD (normal speed). Many of my cities were grassland farm/cottage based and had terrible production but decent food growth. I found whipping to be so useful especially in these cities.

My question is basically, when and how do you determine to change Civic from Slavery to something else?

Thanks for reading,
AveiMil

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

If you are running a nice number of cottages, wait to have emancipation & universal suffrage. Your cottages will grow faster and give you some hammers, plus you have then the rush buy option to make up for lack of slavery in hammer poor but commerce rich cities.
Conclusion: wait for democraty!
Welcome on the forum

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

 

[mi6agent]

you only should whip granary and library.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

you only should whip granary and library.

Not really... there are many times you want to whip... just to list a few: you are working unimproved tiles, you want to manage your happy cap (with or without HR), you want to finish a wonder (you put overflow of whip in it), you want to start a wonder that requires several items of the same buidlings (Oxford, Globe, ...), you want your neighbour dead in 10 turns, you simply have no hills near your last 5 commerce resources city, your eco is in the toilet so you whip courthouses, ... you get the idea

Cheers

 

[Fluxx]

you only should whip granary and library.

you are so wrong.

So so wrong .

You whip, till you are sure you will not have an upcoming key building you soon need in a city with almost no hammer production.

F.e. your commerce cities should have University (most of your cities in general need it because of Oxford). So you will want to have slavery till you have whipped all universities in 6 cities, and can either whip or build Oxford quick.

You really need bank/groceries in your commerce cities? Go whip them!

The only time you want to be running caste, is when you got a GP farm, that needs to run more then 4 GP. Which comes around the time after Education OR you use the GA for philo/bureaucracy/Caste System. (A nice trick is starting a GA when you research CS, and immediately swap to Caste System + philo, you will research CS within 10 turns (on epic, 8 on normal, 12 on marathon), and you will swap to Bureaucracy when you hit CS.
Now you max gold slider, and bulb through Edu, after which you swap to slavery back again and start whipping your Uni's.
After that you can run max science in Uni+Oxford cities.
Or when you are spiritual f.e.

Do you rather want to wait 80 turns for a bank/grocery in your main commerce city, or 10?
Same goes with Uni, same goes with every important expensive building you want to have fast.

Now in the early game, you also want to whip workboats/units/statue.

 

[BarrageQueen]

Whip early, whip often, whip your cities into a puddle of red! Slavery is extremely powerful and should be fully utilized. Allowing cottage tiles to be worked for them to grow is also important, but a little micromanagement can take care of that as well while whipping in needed infrastructure. I usually don't whip military units in my commerce cities though, except for emergencies.

 

[Indiansmoke]

Usually until for hapiness reasons I have to addopt encarnation...otherwise till the end of game....there is always something to whip

 

[robbyextreme]

Yep.. whipping is basically one of the most powerful strategies in the game. There are actually a handful of advice you can find in the strategy archive, but basic rule: high food output + granary is a much more powerful production city then a mined up BFC.

And you should keep whipping until you find a civic that will suit your strategy better.

 

[JammerUno]

Whipping is good while you're growing horizontally, and sometimes good in the transition from horizontal to vertical growth. It's a bad idea to whip when you're trying to grow vertically.

Sometimes that means you quit whipping in the BCs, and sometimes you can whip universities.

 

[UncleJJ]

I use whipping the whole game, many games, particularly if I get the Kremlin. However, I tend to emphasise food and farms in many cities to support a combination of slavery and drafting for production, running specialists with the spare food. So my style of play is very different from the OP who relies mainly on cottages.

In my largest cities it would be rare for me to whip, perhaps only to lose some pop that was unhappy due to high WW. But in the late game there is no better civic for me to run in that category, Emacipation is useless (except to cancel unhappiness but I have many ways to deal with that) and Caste System doesn't add much as I use few workshops and have lots of specialist slots in any cities running specialists. Slavery on the otherhand is wonderful for getting newly captured cities into shape and productive and I have a whole group of special small sized cities that specialise in whipping and drafting and these usually manage a whip and a draft once each cycle. A small food surplus of 5 or 6 food per turn can be very productive in such cities.

 

[DMOC]

you only should whip granary and library.

-Whip wonders to completion in a close race
-Whip axemen, swordsmen, catapults, war eles, etc.
-Whip workers and settlers
-Whip galleys if you see a barbarian galley
-Whip universities for Oxford if your 5th and 6th cities are slow on production
-Whip theatres for fast Globe Theatre

etc.


EDIT: Whipping courthouses, etc. in captured cities is nice if the population is high enough.

 

[JBossch]

Yeah whip early and often like everybody says. Also, remember that you only get 1 unhappiness for 10 turns per whip, regardless of how many citizens are sacrificed. This is why most players favor whipping two or more citizens at a time. Each is worth 30 hammers (normal speed, I think its 45 on epic) so base your whips on that. There is a penalty for whipping something without any hammers already in it so usually build at least one turn, then whip. Some really useful 2pop whip items are: granaries, catapults, galleys, workers.
One reason the strategy is so heavily favored in the early game is because often city growth means just working unimproved tiles. Whip those citizens away to buy you time to improve the tiles. Whipping is still useful much later, however, to build very expensive buildings like universities and banks.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Once the city is size 6-7+ and you have guilds, caste + workshops starts overtaking the whip. I think around pop 10 even w/o guilds the workshops are more efficient (!). I haven't done the math for a while so it might be a bit less.

The kremlin makes the whip competitive again. There's also the option to pack cities closely, keep them small, and whip them that way, which compensates against the larger-pop workshop cities.

But if you want a TON of scientists your only choice is caste, so in that case you'll be using workshops or mines for whatever infra you didn't whip.

But that means that whipping infra before that in hammer-poor cities is pretty important.

 

[Civman123]

Most of the time if you are running a lot of cottages you should stay in slavery until emancipation. Also if you have a large amount of land to still backfill you should stay in slavery to whip critical infrastructure like granaries and libraries.

 

[JammerUno]

Once the city is size 6-7+ and you have guilds, caste + workshops starts overtaking the whip. I think around pop 10 even w/o guilds the workshops are more efficient (!). I haven't done the math for a while so it might be a bit less.

I agree with this.

Having 500 AD as a target for size 10 cities isn't overly ambitious, I've managed that in 1 AD. Settle cities, whip/chop your granaries/forges/courthouses/libraries, switch out of slavery and get growing. Sacrificing high bpt and GPP for slightly more production because of slavery doesn't work for me. In the averag game I either take out an AI early on with axes, or later on with a tech advantage. In between, I happily sacrifice porduction to obtain that tech advantage.

 

[dirtyparrot]

Early is good, when you start getting angry citizens. But, it's really going to be map dependent. In a map with lots of food, but poor in hammers (e.g. islands) it's better to whip alot (unless you feel like running a lot of specialists). Plus, if you play as Montezuma, there's an extra incentive to whip due to his UB.

 

[UncleJJ]

Once the city is size 6-7+ and you have guilds, caste + workshops starts overtaking the whip. I think around pop 10 even w/o guilds the workshops are more efficient (!). I haven't done the math for a while so it might be a bit less.

This only compares Biology farms with workshops. What about all the other cities with other sources of food as well as farms or instead of farms? Like seafood and other resources they lose a lot of production with Caste System and would have to run specialists all the time. How do you deal with the food corporations when SP is replaced by Mercantilism or Free Trade? Workshops don't help with those situations. Also I combine whipping with drafting, in most cities, doing both in the 10 turn cycle and soaking up excess food running spies.

The kremlin makes the whip competitive again. There's also the option to pack cities closely, keep them small, and whip them that way, which compensates against the larger-pop workshop cities.

Correct, Kremlin is important for the late game Slavery strategy. And I do use many small cities which increases food efficiency for drafting and whipping. At a city size of 10 each food is worth 1.5 hammers when used for Slavery and a Biology grassland farm can produce a food surplus of 2 (= 3 hammers). This compares with using the grassland as a workshop giving 4 hammers. However, the Kremlin +50% bonus applies to whipping ( = 4.5 hammers) and not to workshops so the farm is more productive when used with Slavery.

But if you want a TON of scientists your only choice is caste, so in that case you'll be using workshops or mines for whatever infra you didn't whip.

I can't imagine why a late game SE would want to run a lot of scientists. They are not very efficient compared with spies, AW priests or merchants (assuming a trade mission is possible).

Overall, I find late game Slavery is much more flexible than the workshop route and just as productive, if not more so.

 

[DigitalBoy]

However, I might have gone a bit overboard on the whole whipping idea and I think I now might be using it too much. In my latest game I was still whipping at 1400AD (normal speed). Many of my cities were grassland farm/cottage based and had terrible production but decent food growth. I found whipping to be so useful especially in these cities.

My question is basically, when and how do you determine to change Civic from Slavery to something else?

Thanks for reading,
AveiMil

Whipping can be very useful when your cities are stuck at a small size due to happy cap; in addition, you may need your cities to be production oriented early on and slavery gives you a way of squeezing production out of early cities without the need to specialize them as such.

When there's room to grow (religion, luxuries, and other sources of happiness are well established) and some specialized production cities are present to carry the responsibility of troop buildup, I tend to whip less, although it can still be useful in new cities to get important buildings like granaries built. Moreover, slavery becomes less efficient as a food-to-hammer conversion because cities more food to grow a pop point the larger the city is.

I tend to phase out of whipping (not to say that I won't whip, but that I'll do so less often, especially in large, older cities) sometime in the medieval era.

 

[Crusher1]

Yep.. whipping is basically one of the most powerful strategies in the game.

IMO most strong players use the whip quite liberally while those who don't whip enough are generally weaker players.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Overall, I find late game Slavery is much more flexible than the workshop route and just as productive, if not more so.

We played two SGs, Immortal Slavers, to illustrate this... Provided you expand by war, it's very powerfull... main downside is MM imo... workshops are more relaxing