Does using Slavery hurt my game?

[VoiceOfUnreason]

As has been mentioned before, you may need to be careful about when you rush the granary - the math of pop rushing is sort of twisted by the requirement that the granary be filled.

If you just look at growth rate, ignoring other concerns like commerce, you'll find that whipping the granary at 0/28 is faster than whipping it at 24/28. Yet another bit of "it's just weird" that needs to go into the Slavery article I keep promising.

 

[Wodan]

Probably because you're regrowing a pop using the lower size "refill number". Do you want to fill the tank at $5 per gallon or $3 per gallon?

Anyway you're right, I did that wrong.

Wodan

 

[Antilogic]

Those 2 sentences seem to me to contradict each other.

BTW welcome!

Wodan

Actually, I tend to run mines in the meantime for those people...I don't bother growing cottages in cities that I'll be whipping in. I run mines for interim production or extra farms to continue to increase the growth rate.

I have separate cottage cities that hopefully can get infrastructure up quickly (sometimes a whip or two is necessary to get a building completed, but only if it has a food resource for quick growback), and then let it sit and build up commerce.

I'll try an example or two when I have some time around Thanksgiving...right now, I'm booked.

 

[Paeanblack]

Wodan, I have a strong suspicion that you won't be able to boost research output by whipping bonus buildings. I have a hunch that your best chance for success will look something like this:

-2 major food resources (Irr. Wheat, etc)
-lots of river grassland
-no more than 2 unimproved hammers available (1 PH or 1P+1GH, etc
-plenty of health and happiness
-quick growth to size 7-8

For a reasonably realistic example, say your workers, en masse, just clearcut and cottaged a jungle settlement that you hadn't gotten a chance to deal with yet. A city like this is worth cranking through your test.

 

[Wodan]

Wodan, I have a strong suspicion that you won't be able to boost research output by whipping bonus buildings.

Then why do it?

Wodan

 

[cabert]

Then why do it?

Wodan

for production and culture ?

 

[Wodan]

Exactly. But when we say production we mean things such as health or happiness buildings, really, and that's about it. Whipping other buildings I think is not worth it.

If you're in a culture expansion fight on the border using a low-production city, then that's one thing Slavery would be good for. Otherwise, if all you want is to expand to the fat cross, simply pop a missionary into there.

Wodan

 

[jesusin]

Nice thread, but I think it is trying to answer the wrong question.

In my limited experience, a cottage is like a bank long term investement: if you put your money out of it too soon, you don't get any benefit.

So, in general, I never stop working a pastured pigs tile or a cottaged tile. When I whip (and I do whip more population than I leave alone) I stop working tiles like unimproved plains or forested plains or forested grasslands or even mined plains hills.

With this way of whipping the question 'Am I losing or winning commerce if I whip?' is easily answered: I get exactly the same amount of commerce. The question that makes sense to me is 'Am I getting more or less hammers if I whip?'. Do you want to know what's my answer to this question? In GOTM12 I played a peaceful cultural game, so I only whipped 142 pop.

 

[futurehermit]

Given a low happiness cap (higher levels), do you just let your cities grow into greater and greater unhappiness, or do you whip at some point?

P.S., I agree that slavery has poor synergy with a CE. Much better in the SE where you need to work surplus food sources for specialists *anyways* so regrowth will be faster.

 

[Wodan]

Oh geez, are we going into this again?

Why is it better to regrow faster? I'm not asking why it's good to regrow faster... the benefits are easy to recognize. But why is it better?

Wouldn't it also be beneficial to work a cottage and gain some commerce? The benefits there too are easy to recognize: commerce earlier means earlier research and earlier Tech advances, gold along the way means this city can help pay for itself and that's less Civ maintenance costs that my other cities will have to cover, and my cottages are advancing toward Towns.

This then becomes a choice between getting to city limit earlier (and being able to then choose between switching to all cottages, working specialists, or whipping again) or getting to the limit later (and having commerce come in an ever-increasing amount, advancing cottage growth, and getting research earlier rather than later).

It's not a clear-cut choice IMO. It depends on the situation and personal choice. Evidenced by some of the tests we did in this thread. But in any event, I'm far from convinced that slavery is better. Especially since we have to give up running Serfdom, Caste System, or Emancipation.

Wodan

 

[futurehermit]

No, I don't want to get into it again, we can keep our disagreement to the other thread.

 

[Dux_]

Hey FH, glad to see you hanging around somewhere. Give us a visit at the Orion forums sometime. Btw, we should play some Civ IV, it's been a while since I've played a non-modded Civ IV game, but I shouldn't be that rusty.

 

[futurehermit]

Hey Dux, good to see you. I'll try to drop by the Orion forums, thought it had fizzled out.

Sorry all for hijacking the thread.

 

[Cer]

In general, slavery is a poor choice whenever you're missing out on working cottages or on working well-improved tiles. except in a dire emergency.

Slavery tends to be a good choice when the alternative is working 21 tiles and similar.

 

[TRJS]

Given a low happiness cap (higher levels), do you just let your cities grow into greater and greater unhappiness, or do you whip at some point?QUOTE]

This is my question also and I only play prince level.

Also, what if your only option is Slavery or default (Sorry forgot name am posting from work). Should you switch back to slavery in non-war times.

Example would be my current game playing as Wilhelm where I have taken out Shaka and only other civ I know is Issabella, who does not wish to trade as she only knows me. Yes I know should probably have waited removing Shaka until I had another civ to trade with etc. However, in this case I am yet to have Caste System as an option, have a fairly young bunch of cities and have started whipping out infrastructure. Would some suggest I switch back out of slavery to reduce costs and spam more cottages? I am financial after all. (Can understand if difficult to answer this without a save).

 

[DreamworK]

Sometimes I feel like the question of whether or not to whip (for me) is my own psychological tendencies to absolutely abhor seeing citizens and I really just want to get that market or temple or forge so that I will have enough to cover my post whipping.

Mathematics aside, I think others may share this feeling with me. Having a bright red color staring you in the face has psychological implications that contribute to my choice of whipping far more than just the pure statistics of paying additional maintenance for an unproductive citizen.

I'm new to the forums so yeah, hi all.

Of course we all would like to know the answer to the question: is whipping more harmful than it is beneficial? But this, in and of itself, is a tribute to our own yearning for a simple decision making process to follow every game. In essence, we want to be faced with a universal prospect of either A: yes, you should use slavery and whip or B: no, you should not use slavery and whip.

Unfortunately, as with all things in life that are more complex than having to decide which pair of socks to put on, this is one of those situations where there really is no one correct answer. I personally feel everyone's frustration on this issue because I, too, am a power gamer who strives for nothing more than optimization and perfection (sometimes I reload a save after moving a worker in a sub-optimal fashion). However, I feel as if I may be on to something...

Maybe I should try playing more for fun and just say "I choose not to use slavery because I have a moral objection to hypothetical murder". The historical use of 'whipping' or forced labor of the lower class until thousands, if not millions, have sacrificed their personal lives in order to build wonders for the ruling class such as the great wall, etc. is entirely accurate. From now on, I think I will opt for the less stressful path of having a moral objection to the use of the slavery civic rather than to debate endlessly on this subject.

And then again, nothing is more fun than destroying a neighboring civ with a huge army made possible via whipping. I think I'll stick with it. To hell with the lower class, snap, crackle, pop, whip, I'll do whatever it takes to win. So when you guys finally figure out which is better, let me know. In the meantime I'll just stick to my modus operandi of not whipping cottages and not growing onto unhappiness.

Has anyone else just starved off unhappiness while working plains mines, rather than suffer the whip anger? I know that is a bit off topic, but has anyone done the math on starvation and whether or not it is more economically feasible to just starve off unhappiness in turns fewer than the whip anger would last?

Oh yeah and the fat hen part made me

 

[Fluroscent]

Wow, that was an old thread revived. So fun reading peoples thoughts from the past

In my limited experience

Made me chuckle

OT:

Has anyone else just starved off unhappiness while working plains mines, rather than suffer the whip anger? I know that is a bit off topic, but has anyone done the math on starvation and whether or not it is more economically feasible to just starve off unhappiness in turns fewer than the whip anger would last?

It is most certainly wrong to grow into unhappiness just to starve back. An unhappy citizen eats 2, so if you are starving by moving a citizen to a 0 tile (like a PH), you could have just avoided growing into unhapiness in the first place.
If you get unhappy faces for other reasons that are not temporary (trade deal ended, with no chance of regaining the resource), then it may well be worth it to starve off the unhappy ones asap so you get 2 more food per turn (whether slaving is better is going to depend on the city).

 

[Earthling]

I think there could be something to it, but I find it difficult to believe these numbers are adding up.

The numbers do add up; slavery almost always costs you more in the long term than not slaving. I personally am a huge fan of using it sparingly and getting out when convenient. Slaving most buildings is a waste, especially over population 5-6. I think I've said before one of the most painful common yet unrecognized sights in reading about someone's game is if they, say, conquer a city and slave like 5 things down to 2 population, rather than staying at 15 pop or whatever.

The gains you get in slavery are when you absolutely need something immediately. The axemen for your rush or overflow onto a wonder or early game infrastructure like libraries/monuments. Occasionally you do get a city that's efficient to slave but usually it's because it has nothing else - so sure, the desert coastal city with just the couple of fish you might as well slave again and again over 10-turn cycles or whatever.

But I think it's been shown elsewhere that for production/food - any tile with more than 5 yield it's mostly inefficient to slave. Grassland mines outproduce slaving population, and plains mines do if your city is large enough, though not for small cities.

For commerce it's almost always no contest of course. Slaving a cottage with 4 commerce on it for production on a building will be a net loss. Slave the library to get a faster Great Scientist, sure, or slave to unlock something else for some reason (courthouse prereq for forbidden palace, universities for oxford, etc...) but it won't get improvements in that one city.

Oh, and nice necro again, something else to mention - I also invariably WILL grow into unhappiness. Sometimes again just seeing various people rationalize staving off growth is ridiculous. If you anticipate any way at all to increase your happy/health caps, it's better to just grow into unhappiness than to cut off production. In other words, if you've got say 2 corn, don't stop working the corn tiles to work less productive tiles just because you don't want to grow into unhappiness. If you grow 2 pop over the happy cap, just as soon as you actually get the cap up those pop are there and productive.

 

[Artichoker]

There are 2 basic approaches to using Slavery:


1) Aggressive Use of Slavery

This approach focuses on using Slavery to gain a head start on production of key buildings in the early game, and it is the most common approach taken by players on the forum.

Key aspects of this approach include:

* establishing the whip as the main source of production for all or most of your cities
* using "whip cycles" to maximize hammer output from your cities
* high number of farms to accelerate city growth after whipping
* targeting an early switch to Slavery upon gaining Bronze Working (or shortly afterward), even if it means spending an entire turn of anarchy on Slavery alone



2) Restricted Use of Slavery

This approach is used less often, but focuses on using Slavery in a limited amount, but over a long period of time.

Key aspects of this approach include:

* long-term planning of city growth, with a highly-controlled use of Slavery to provide fast production at critical times in the game
* no "whip cycles", but rather key buildings that need to be whipped at critical times
* limited number of farms
* targeting a switch to Slavery in conjunction with another civic such as Hereditary Rule or a religion civic


The 2nd approach to using Slavery has some strategic possibilites that are yet to be explored fully. For example, one possibility is the option of delaying Code of Laws. If this option is taken, then Caste System is not an option to replace Slavery. In this case, the main advantage of Slavery over Caste System is not the direct benefits it provides, but rather the easier tech prerequistes needed to unlock the civic.

 

[MrBanana]

IMO slavery is best when you have a food rich city and limited happiness.

BTW, are these calculations counting the large amount of overflow whipping can give you (why does that sound so wrong?)