@kossin
Could you please offer a closer view of that coastal city east of the capital, which has a lot of production on the floodplains?
I'm assuming some of those are watermills, some are workshops?
And where do you get all the bonuses from? I guess state property offers 1 food per workshops and watermills, electricity offers 1 commerce per watermill, guilds and chemistry offer 2 production per workshop, but... I don't know where to get the other bonuses from.
Sure, here are a few screenies from the latest save.
Watermills boni:
-State property adds 1 food
-Replaceable Parts adds 1 hammer
-Electricity adds 2 commerce
(levees add a hammer to every improvement...)
Workshops boni:
-State property adds 1 food
-Guilds adds 1 hammer
-Chemistry adds 1 hammer
-Caste System adds 1 hammer
(levees add a hammer to every improvement...)
Would you say it's always optimal to switch to hammers after you get State Property? What I recall reading is that a Free Speech town out performs grass wheels/workshops in State Property, though it's close. And without the neccesary sprawling empire, and the preexisting investments in libraries, universities, and cottages, I don't fully understand why you made the switch. Isn't Kremlin rushbuying good enough?
And given that you're now banking on hammers, can whipping really we worth doing?
Yes you are correct, under FS+US and with the Kremlin, Towns offer the best yield of any regular improvement when producing infra/units.
However in my case, only 2 cities had been cottaged and waiting another 40 turns for Cottages to mature isn't my idea of playing Deity. Switching to 'Hammer Economy' is faster and the whip is still very strong. (Kremlin -33% rushing cost is like +50% production, meaning each pop is worth 90 hammers with Kremlin+Forge+Factory+Power. With a mix of watermills, windmills and workshops, your cities re-grow very fast)
Lord - if your whole empire is full of towns than thats what you want to do, but you can't determine your empire-wide civic by a few cities. Slavery and state property do go together. You'll notice when you make the switch that almost all of your cities now have a big food surplus you can whip off of. And whipping 3 pop off of workshops and growing it back in 5 turns to get a factory is probably optimal.
Who cares about libraries when you just need units? If Kossin had stopped research and kept pumping out cavalry he'd have finished about now.
Quoted for truth.
^Caste works pretty well with SP too, if I remember correctly.
Correct... one turn in caste, next turn whip, next turn in caste ...
How do you get production from Caste system? It doesnt allow for more engineers, so how can you get more production. (note: i play vanilla, so maybe caste has something extra in bts? because i remember seeing smth like that).
Secondly, how do you get such good production slaving cavalry? I've tried it but it seems very inefficient: cavarly = 120 hammers ==> 4 population needed when you put in atleast 1 turn before whipping (unless you can get more than 30 hammers in 1 turn, then it's only 3 pop). That means a city of 12 people can whip twice, after which you end up with a tiny city of 4 pop, which has basically no production left at all. So assuming you have around 6 cities, this gets you 12 cavarly, and completely crashes your economy, production, hammers per turn, ... It basically crashes your entire empire. And that's when you have your 6 cities at 12 pop. Because usually there are some low food cities who are only at around 8 pop or less. On the other hand, you did pull it off just a few days ago
. So i'm wondering how you managed to do that.
Caste adds 1 hammer to workshops in BTS.
Maybe I'll rewind to the whipping round later when the game is done.
The easiest answer is: 'food economy'. Your cities grow back fast (+10 food surplus allows for a lot of whipping).
When you whip a cavalry, you get a good amount of overflow (~40ish) which goes into the next unit. That reduces the cost to ~80 hammers, however you don't whip this round because of the no-invested-hammers-penalty. If you wait the next turn then you can 3-pop with almost max overflow any common city and 2-pop the cities with a bit more natural hammers. It's really quite simple once you try it out. Just make sure to have lots of farms and forges as well as growing your cities before starting.
Cities with developed tiles grow back pretty fast so that after whipping 3 times a size 12 city, it isn't down to size 3, but more in the size 8~10 area depending on food specials.
1- Workshops get +1
from Caste System.
2- He has probably Forges in those cities, at least, making it 37
per whip, then Factories for 45
per whip. Other than that, I'd second your question
I'm always taking forever to build a military...
The DR is always a good read, Kossin. Fun and instructive
More land > shinier cities... whip away the populations to have even more shinier land!
Don't forget you get whatever production bonuses that the city has when you whip. Forges, factories, HE ect.. This decreases the number of pop you burn up.
Gotag
Yup.
and you can switch into police state for another 25% bonus. using 4 pop for whip is not really usefull, rather let the city build the unit until the unit can be whipped for 2 pop. then, repeat: let the city grow while building the unit, whip for 2 pop, repeat. ofc you have to take care of unhappiness, but while in war preperations and while warring you can use the culture slider to temporarily solve this problem. still, you shouldn' stack unhappiness too high so you HAVE to use the culture slider: quick strikes are preferable, and afterwards you should be in peace rather sooner than later.
the whip is a great way to improve your production at this time, but it's nowhere near the "only" production source as in the BCs sometimes.
Yup.. although Police State only comes late or with The Pyramids.
That's amazing. Well, at least it's amazing when you're a mediocre Noble player.
How do you get so much science output? Are working a few scientists per city enough for it? I'm obviously missing something basic here.
The capital was handling ~60% of my beakers. I had another cottage city and the rest relied on rivers, resources and trade routes mostly. One of the advantages of non-cottage cities is that you don't lose anything when you whip away farms.