Advice for tileimprovements

[civtilidy]

Hi!
There are some tiles im very doubtful about if it is worth working or better wipped away:
(assuming food is bottleneck, no happycap, granary, pre-biology and no corps)
1. plain hills: what to do with these? I heard its more productive to whip these away below size 10 than working a mine. the reason is whipping converts 1 foodsurplus to more than 2 hammers while the plainhillmine converts it to 2 hammers. So is it better to ignore plainhills until machinery? Is it worth working with windmill
(1 foodsurplus=2hammers,1gold)? Even here its 1 gold vs production from whipping minus 2 hammers/foodsurplus. Does riverside or not decide if its worth it?

2. plains flatland(food is bottleneck): what would you do?
a) farming: each tile is foodneutral but produce one hammer.
b) cottage: use city 2 foodsurplus to work 2 cottages and never be able to work the rest of the land, stopping growth at size 2
c) use the 2 free food for whipping
d) would riverside change your answer?

Cities in such lands should ofc be avoided but brown tiles are common so most cities have these dilemmas.

3. whip or work? citysize less than 10
a)desert/snow tundra mine
b) desert/snow tundra windmill
c) would riverside change your answer?

 

[Tatran]

Plains hills are better in the early game than flat plains.
1) When possible settle on it (+1 hammer and hill defense) and when the city doesn't need production you can hire a specialist.
2) I mainly use flat plains for chain irrigation and production (lumbermills).
3) Cities with mainly brown tiles will focus on military. A granary + courthouse will be enough.

 

[MegaLurker]

This exercise doesn't really make sense assuming no happy cap and an undefined city size ("under size 10" is vague). It seems like you're looking for a hard rule based on adding up tile yields and comparing them to yield from whipping. But there are so many unknowns in your question:

-whipping is most efficient when you're using it to avoid the happy cap, but here we assume no happy cap so one of the major reasons to whip isn't there at all.
-whipping at size 4 is entirely different from whipping at size 6+.
-food is the bottleneck, but we have no sense of tile layout and so no idea of what this city can produce at what size for stagnant growth.
-running specialists is not being considered at all?

If a city has enough good that you're deciding whether to grow onto improved tundra tiles or not maybe it should be producing your next GP? Research/wealth multipliers and courthouses make whipping less favourable. You pretty much never want to be working a tile under 4 total yield unless there's a specific reason you're doing it. Which improvements are worth whipping away depends on how big your need for hammers is compared to commerce, and what it is exactly that you're whipping. If your economy is tanked you might want to work even non-lighthouse/non-financial coast rather than whip.

 

[nate45]

>I heard its more productive to whip these away below size 10 than working a mine.

eh, not really.

assume you have zero food surplus in a city with a plains hill that is size 6.

it takes 15 food to grow with your grainary from size 5 to size 6.

If you whip one citizen, your food surplus goes to +2, and you gain 30 hammers. But you lose 4 hammers/turn until you grow back to size 4, in 7 or 8 turns, which means you lose either 28 or 32 hammers over the next 7 or 8 turns. Net result long term: Nothing, but you got the unit faster at least (this is the main advantage of slavery, really). But you also had to build a granary in this stupid city just to break even.

...

Next up: Assume size 6 city with a plains/hill/windmill that has no extra food.

it takes 15 turns to grow back after whipping the windmill worker. During those 15 turns, you lose 30 hammers and 15 commerce. So obviously don't whip windmills, and they're better than mines if you're low on food.


finally: take a city with infinite health and happiness, with an infinite amount of irrigated plains tiles that aren't on rivers. Given infinite time, this city could grow to infinite size to produce infinite production every turn. Or you could stop its growth at some point for +30 hammers every 7 or 8 turns or so. But that would take a lot less time. Basically: whip these if you want a unit faster, but if you're in no hurry, let them grow to happy cap and then cap them off with a specialist or a workshop or something.

and don't whip commerce squares, unless you hate your economy.

...

IMO the main point of slavery is to produce things fast, not to produce them efficiently. Like, if you're about ready to rush someone, right before you send in your army, whip your cities for a bunch of extra units, and send those too. Then your cities can grow back to size while producing less stuff in the meantime, but who cares since you got your army a few turns earlier than you would have and those turns might make the difference.

 

[traius]

Why would you only have a +2 food surplus? Your example with specific numbers is as useless as his example with no numbers. I would never be growing a size 4(!) city on +2 food surplus (well, that might not _always_ be true, but I defintiely try to avoid it).

If you want to whip, you need to make sure your city has access to food. Slavery is a food to hammers conversion, so if food is more precious to your city then other yields, obviously you're not going to get great results with slavery. If the food surplus is instead 5 or 6, the number of turns you are not using the tiles you just whipped is greatly reduced.

 

[nate45]

Why would you only have a +2 food surplus?

because in his example, he said happiness isn't an issue, and he said food is the bottleneck. so presumably the growth of the city size is limited by food not by happiness, therefore he'd be at zero food if he used the plains/hills and +2 food if he whipped it.

 

[Yamps]

IMO the main point of slavery is to produce things fast, not to produce them efficiently. Like, if you're about ready to rush someone, right before you send in your army, whip your cities for a bunch of extra units, and send those too. Then your cities can grow back to size while producing less stuff in the meantime, but who cares since you got your army a few turns earlier than you would have and those turns might make the difference.

Getting things done earlier often means the same thing as efficiency. Anyway, like already stated, whipping shines at high surplus situations to get hammers from extra surplus food. I'll just add one example of pure efficiency: whipping settlers and workers to get a better ratio than 1 food for 1 hammer which you'd get by slowly building them.

 

[nate45]

Getting things done earlier often means the same thing as efficiency. Anyway, like already stated, whipping shines at high surplus situations to get hammers from extra surplus food. I'll just add one example of pure efficiency: whipping settlers and workers to get a better ratio than 1 food for 1 hammer which you'd get by slowly building them.

Workers? Settlers? Who builds those? Just build military units!

Yeah, but you're right of course.

Also you could whip a bank or something if the +50% gold per turn is better than the difference of whatever you'd lose (and it usually is).

 

[Tristan_C]

To do a proper opportunity cost calculation you would need to sum foregone hammers and commerce during the time it takes to replenish the population after a whip. This is difficult to do in your head unless you're a savant. The production is, of course, restoring itself over the period, and the appearance of a new asset (the thing you whipped) changes the comparison as well.

Just figuring out the amount of food and thus turns it will take to replenish the population is a good way to estimate the opportunity cost, though;

Food storage sizes:

Quik = 13 + (pop * 1.33) rounded to nearest integer
Norm = 20 + (pop * 2)
Epic = 40 + (pop * 4)
Mara = 60 + (pop * 6)
​

e.g. a pop4 city on Quick has a storage of 18, and a pop7 city on Mara has a storage size of 102... and don't forget granary saving 9 and 51 food respectively when the cities grow.

 

[rah]

That why I like those challenges from a few months ago. It allowed some really good side by side comparisons. There are usually more factors that cloud the calculations. But when I see that this was accomplished in 50 turns using this method and 48 turns using this method, it's a lot easier to judge. Granted circumstances change but if you know in general, you're better armed to make the right decision.

 

[Fippy]

Imo there are 2 sorts of whips..calculated and planned, and those done under pressure.
If you need more units or your whole attack/defense may fail, you will not care about what's better for your cities.

 

[Quechua]

it takes 15 turns to grow back after whipping the windmill worker. During those 15 turns, you lose 30 hammers and 15 commerce. So obviously don't whip windmills, and they're better than mines if you're low on food.

Helpful example but I think your wording might give people the wrong idea and overvalue 1f2h compared to 4h tiles in general. The only difference in your example is the 1 commerce per turn, the production of the tile compared to whipping is the same. If we are talking riverside plains mine vs plains forest you'd come to the opposite conclusion.

Both tiles convert food surplus to hammers at the same rate which is in general what matters for production during growth. For instance if you have 3f surplus and are growing onto a 4h and a 1f2h, choosing either to work first will give you the same production in the end.

 

[nate45]

the other time to use slavery, i didn't mention this in my first post cause its kindof obvious and wasn't related to the OP's example, is when you have tons of food in a city and need buildings, but don't really have a good source of hammers, or you just have so much food that whipping is more efficient than building. Like, the typical example is an ocean city where you have fish and crabs but no hills or anything... first you whip a couple fishing boats, then a granary maybe, then lighthouse, library, market, etc. Eventually it's a pretty good city.

 

[MegaLurker]

Imo there are 2 sorts of whips..calculated and planned, and those done under pressure.

This is pretty much the best one-sentence summary of slavery I've seen.


Whipping as soon as you've gotten HBR/Construction/Engineering/Mil Trad/Rifling/whatever your breakout tech is kind of falls under both categories. You might have been able to plan your first round of whips, but after that it's desperation time. If you don't whip hard enough because you're worrying about maximum efficiency you can lose yourself the game. Not immediately, but perhaps in 50-100 turns you will be in an un-winnable situation. Assuming you're not playing an easy game.

You can't be afraid of going from a strong economy with large cities and tons of worked tiles to an empire of size 3-4 cities with 50+ turns of whip anger when appropriate.

 

[Tristan_C]

Imo there are 2 sorts of whips..calculated and planned, and those done under pressure.
If you need more units or your whole attack/defense may fail, you will not care about what's better for your cities.

Certainly TMIT's videos show that you can win purely on making the crucial decisions, and to hell with the micro. But I think getting a general grip on tile improvements and planned whips is important in reaching those points.

 

[Strickl3r]

For me the plains hill, if i did not settle on it usually only gets worked for building settlers and workers in the early game or in citys that have barren surrounding and there would be no better tile in range that gives at least 4 yield with 1 food in it.

HE epic city also likes to work those tiles and the capitol at some point in the game( for example buildig the taj)

 

[civtilidy]

Its a long time a checked here. I appreciate all input and there is no strict rules to my questions, the discussion is open.

 

[civtilidy]

This exercise doesn't really make sense assuming no happy cap and an undefined city size ("under size 10" is vague). It seems like you're looking for a hard rule based on adding up tile yields and comparing them to yield from whipping. But there are so many unknowns in your question:

-whipping is most efficient when you're using it to avoid the happy cap, but here we assume no happy cap so one of the major reasons to whip isn't there at all.
-whipping at size 4 is entirely different from whipping at size 6+.
-food is the bottleneck, but we have no sense of tile layout and so no idea of what this city can produce at what size for stagnant growth.
-running specialists is not being considered at all?

If a city has enough good that you're deciding whether to grow onto improved tundra tiles or not maybe it should be producing your next GP? Research/wealth multipliers and courthouses make whipping less favourable. You pretty much never want to be working a tile under 4 total yield unless there's a specific reason you're doing it. Which improvements are worth whipping away depends on how big your need for hammers is compared to commerce, and what it is exactly that you're whipping. If your economy is tanked you might want to work even non-lighthouse/non-financial coast rather than whip.

-Lets say Hereditary rule is used.
-city is size 8
-no resources, only bown hills and plains some riverside
-we have a huge gp farm so gpp wont matter

 

[elmurcis]

If food is only +2 (from farmed plain) and I have plainhill (mine) inside BFC (and there is no place for another city), I would stop growing at size 4, 6 or 8 (for multiple 2 pop whips when needed).

 

[civtilidy]

If food is only +2 (from farmed plain) and I have plainhill (mine) inside BFC (and there is no place for another city), I would stop growing at size 4, 6 or 8 (for multiple 2 pop whips when needed).

would it not be more productive to work 2 1 than 4 because the 2 can be converted to more than 3 via whip? (below size 10)