building up cities

[ThyGuy]

I'm having issues growing cities. I can't say I go with either SE or CE but I guess I would point in the CE range. The issue is I love slavery... alot. I whip every city every ten turns but I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't such a very good idea. Yeah, I have a bunch of cottages in a city, but the population of the city is low enough that half of them never get used.

Some cities don't have great resources, lots of food, lots of cottages, but virtually no hammers. This should be a economy city, but how should I go whipping this city? Should I start whipping the city asap or let it grow to max with citizen anger then start whipping sparingly to give it resource buildings (library, market, etc).

Should I follow the same rule for high hammer cities, or should I whip the crap out of them as often as possible without causing citizen anger?

Sometimes I wonder how I reached noble not knowing these things...

Edit: I like playing on normal. That game seems the smoothest to me.

 

[Joshua368]

If your city has reached its happy cap and is still relatively small (frequent in the early game) yet it still can grow faster than it can build, whip.

If your city has basic infastructure it needs before it can be worthwhile (monument, granary, library, courthouse, forge maybe) and its production isn't excellent, whip.

If its wartime and you want to sacrifice your city's individual well-being for an advantage in the war, whip.

If the city has absolutely no other means of production, (i.e. fishing village with seafood) whip.

 

[djvandrake]

Sometimes I wonder how I reached noble not knowing these things...

I play on Monarch and I still struggle with that balance, so don't feel like you should have mastered it by now.

I whip very sparingly. And maybe that's much to my detriment. I usually save the whip for very important buildings (like wonders or a library) but not much else unless the reaches a +2. I think it's more important that those citizens be working an improved tile like a resource or a cottage then to give me a library 15 turns earlier than I'd have it anyway. It really depends on the rate the city grows versus your ability to make them happy.

 

[30+]

Imo, the only time you would whip a cottage city is:

1. More citizens then improved tiles in which case whip a worker.
2. Too many unhappy faces due to excess population then whip a useful item

I'm sure there might be other execptions, but as a rule of thumb I think it's much better to keep the whip away from cottage cities. Besides, they won't need any buildings besides a granary and librabry for a very very long time. In most scenarios my science cities have nothing but a Terrace, Library (for long time!), and eventually a Courthouse. Other buildings don't generally get produced until after US. I'd say it's better to slow grow the library than to whip away citizens working cottages.

Courthouse example:

Maintenance cost before CH= -10
Savings after CH= 5
Whip now cost= 5 pop
Slow build= 40 turns

Gold saved by whipping now= 40*5= 200

Commerce lost by whipping now:
using hypothetical (for growth time and cottages) with every cottage producing 4:

8 turns to grow 1 pop: 20(5 pop not working 4 cottages)for 8 turns=160
10 turns to grow 1 pop: 16(4 pop not working 4)*10= 160
12 turns to grow 1 pop 12(3)*12= 144
14 turns to grow 1 pop 8(2)*14= 112
16 turns to grow 1 pop 4(1)*16= 64

Commerce lost by whipping now= 752. You'd have to be running your slider at about 26% to make whipping more effecient. If you ran it at the average of 60% then you'd be saving 250 by slow growing your CH, minimum. It could be more because some of those cottages might have grown into +5. In the above example you could slow grow your courthouse 90turns @ 60% slider and that would be equivelant to Whip now. Of course this is all random and circumstantial because Maintenance cost, populations, growth times, etc, would all be different in a real game but the principles remain the same. In most cases slow growing is best, until the math says it aint, lol.


I think whipping in production cities as a whole is not needed. There comes a point where you lose production in the long term by one citizen not working a tile. Obviously a 4 tile nets you 40 in 10 turns while the whip only gives you 30.

 

[Joshua368]

You don't want to whip wonders too often as they have a 50% penalty in regards to whipping. If you have the special resource then it cancels out to a 50% bonus in raw hammers but its worse than any regular non-whipped hammers that go through the 100% filter.

Of course there are close races where you need to get it immediately before someone else steals it but something I would generally avoid. Instead I would whip things while building it and let the overflow go in...

 

[BarrageQueen]

Some cities don't have great resources, lots of food, lots of cottages, but virtually no hammers. This should be a economy city, but how should I go whipping this city? Should I start whipping the city asap or let it grow to max with citizen anger then start whipping sparingly to give it resource buildings (library, market, etc).

Indiscriminate whipping can definitely be detrimental to overall game play. For example, it seems that you whip units in these research/commerce cities. Kinda defeats the purpose of city specialization if these cities are whipped out of doing their jobs, doesn't it?

I think you're aware yourself that you whip excessively. I'd suggest taking a closer look at each city before grabbing the whip. Look closer at which tiles are being worked in each city, and be more practical about it.

 

[macmert]

I am not sure this is the brightest idea but...

How about building two or three GP farms and pop GE and hurry production? Is it a long shot?

 

[Soirana]

if i only knew reliable way to get GE in timely manner...

 

[macmert]

ummm... Well I think you need a forge for an engineer in the GP farm... so whip a forge, then put in some GE, well then wait for it...

I guess...

 

[batavier]

I am not sure this is the brightest idea but...

How about building two or three GP farms and pop GE and hurry production? Is it a long shot?

The only way to get an engineer farm going early is to build engineer wonders and run the single engineer from a forge. You shouldn't do this in more than one city.

Any engineer that appears will likely be used to rush world wonders and certainly not for mundane infrastructure. Settling engineers, prophets and even
scientists will also help with building stuff in science or money cities, but this is rather limited as well.

 

[MkLh]

I like to whip all the commerce buildings (libraries, markets, grocers, banks, even crappy universities because of Oxford) in most of my cottage cities ASAP. Commerce multipliers really make a difference (+100% from gold buildings alone) and unlock 2 strong national wonders.

Exceptions include cities with no good food source, and a Bureacracy capital which I want to grow beyond its health cap and which always has enough hammers to build all the buildings.

 

[Nissin]

I like the courthouse example above. It really shows how much commerce and research through the slider is wasted by whipping. Science cities don't need markets, grocers, or banks.

 

[macmert]

The only way to get an engineer farm going early is to build engineer wonders and run the single engineer from a forge. You shouldn't do this in more than one city.

Any engineer that appears will likely be used to rush world wonders and certainly not for mundane infrastructure. Settling engineers, prophets and even
scientists will also help with building stuff in science or money cities, but this is rather limited as well.

Yea I know, it is a really long shot... Since you cant run multiple engineers in a GP farm...

But if I manage to pop more then one GE, I sometimes use it to build a regular building rather than a wonder etc... but again it is very rare, so again whipping is better then hurrying...

or maybe... I would say emancipation and hurrying with gold but I guess it will be a bit late...

 

[MkLh]

I like the courthouse example above. It really shows how much commerce and research through the slider is wasted by whipping. Science cities don't need markets, grocers, or banks.

Courthouse is of course a secondary building, rarely worth of whipping. Science cities (cities with science specialists?) don't need gold buildings, but commerce cities (cities with cottages or merchants) certainly do.

Perhaps some don't realize that in CE gold and science are more or less the same. Gold multipliers allow you keep your science slider higher (or keep it longer time in 100% when running a binary research - recommended) and thus produce more science.

 

[Cashew]

Past the early game the commerce/cottage cities you have really shouldn't be whipped at all. You won't have the abundance of food in those cities that you might have had early game, and it's not worth it to try and build anything but infrastructure.

 

[MkLh]

Ok. A case study to show that whipping in cottage cities is not always a bad thing. This is from a game I play lately, epic speed (emperor difficulty if that matters).



Nottingham has a size of 10, one good food source, 7 towns, 2 useless citizens and just one hammer. It pulls out 56 gold as 0% science. Market has been build just for one turn to take a whip penalty away. 5 pop whip:



34 gold, quite crash indeed.

1 turn and a market is built:



42.5 gold now.

2 turns to size 6:



50 gold already.

and 4 more turns to size 7:



56.25 and still quickly growing. So it took 7 epic speed turns until whipping market started to pay off. Sure I lost some gold during these turns, but building market in any other way would been taken dozens and dozens of turns with a weaker gold output. This should be enough to show that an advice "never whip in cottage cities" is nonsense. It's situational really.

 

[Cashew]

I guess I should clarify that I assumed you were talking about slaving units. I don't see how slaving buildings could lead to unhappiness unless you're really just horrendous at managing your happiness.

 

[30+]

Perhaps some don't realize that in CE gold and science are more or less the same.

They are not the same thing at all. They will both be effected much differently depending on what you do with the slider. Most CE run the slider 60-70% so it won't make sense to spend expensive hammers or loss of commerce by whipping gold enhancing modifiers that will give you little gain in terms of what you gave up trying to get that gain. That's why I say save those buildings for US and if you want to run binary, do it then.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

They are not the same thing at all. They will both be effected much differently depending on what you do with the slider. Most CE run the slider 60-70% so it won't make sense to spend expensive hammers or loss of commerce by whipping gold enhancing modifiers that will give you little gain in terms of what you gave up trying to get that gain. That's why I say save those buildings for US and if you want to run binary, do it then.

Binary makes most sense when building multipliers (aka library and possibly academy). The gold multipliers are also and buildings, and may merit consideration as a result, especially if you have 3-4 of the resources. Otherwise, they're a tad hammer-intensive unless you're somehow pulling massive medieval conquests or something like janissary rape of 20 cities where the slider is going to drop and those markets/grocer/banks will actually help at 90% gold breakeven. Just depends.

 

[DaveMcW]

MkLh, you could also whip a Lighthouse, then whip the Market at size 12.