Dormant hammers/food/beakers/GPP

[sampsa]

I don't think it's valuable to think about tiny elements of the "loss segment" as something to be prevented. I think it these kinds of losses be embraced, acknowledged and compensated by profits on actions that inherently carry profits.

What he is saying is that these losses sometimes can and should be prevented. He is talking about settling 2nd city as early as possible, but it remained unclear to me if that is all he is talking about or about a broader concept. The responses have been talking about the possibility of delaying a settler for better tech trading opportunities, improving tiles before settling a city, blocking an AI, whipping, overflow, typical micro-management, build choices... I am confused

 

[krikav]

I do want to discuss the general broader topic.
As I state in the opening post "hammers/beakers/GPP or what have you, that are parcially invested in some project, is quite useless. It's when you reach the tipping point you get the utility."

I'm not laying forward a theory, nor am I asking a specific question.
Just reasoning around something I have been thinking about lately.

 

[Swordnboard]

I see Krikav's original idea as twofold:

Firstly, the idea of minimizing latent/dormant resources is instructive towards proper micromanagement. Fippy's improved corn example presents a dilemma: would we prefer to leave a few settler hammers dormant for one turn before resuming the settler, or leave 3 food dormant for the entire build time of the settler? My intuition and experience suggest the former is significantly better, and Krikav's "interest rate" idea happens to arrive at the same conclusion. Of course, if the settler gets completed 1T earlier because of this the correct choice is even more evident.

Second, it's possible that some major alterations to priorities are in order. For example, imagine a city surrounded by riverside grasslands, and we are faced with the choice between farming or cottaging. For the same food scenario, we can either work 2 farms + 1 scientist , or 3 cottages. If a GS will be produced in a timely manner, some people would lean towards the scientist despite the significant commerce edge of the cottages (of course, if a GS will never be birthed from the city the cottages are superior by a wide margin). But Krikav's idea suggests that, even if a GS will be eventually produced, the "now" factor of the cottages may pay significant dividends that make up the difference. It's pretty easy to see that early-game production is exponential in nature, and research can sometimes be the same way (for example, arriving at a military technology or communism/assembly line/corporations). We aren't trying to reach a formulaic way of playing the game, just throwing around some ideas which can help guide us to make better choices.

Sampsa & Gumbolt: I agree that these micro ideas are generally already practiced by most immortal/deity players, but sometimes you open up someone's save and see them producing a settler while at 25/26 food bank , or 3 nearly finished items in the queue of multiple cities, or something awful like that. So it is worthwhile to provide some mathematical intuition behind the micro to help everyone improve their gameplay, even if some of the numbers and equations are a bit dubious.

 

[krikav]

Yes, most players that play this game at high difficulties practice the proper micromanagemen that is hinted at as being more effective by this way of calculating just by heart.

And models/theory always have to be taken with a huge grain of salt, but if this concept dormant resources can aid thought processes or discussions then the goal is accomplished.

@Swordnboard Thanks for the cottages vs specialists example.
Cottages would yield commerce immediately, and the GPP would remain dormant for quite some time. But from this way of thinking, commerce itself is not something that neccesary gives a gain here and now either...
Commerce can be assigned to research, but the beakers invested at the beginning of a tech (or while you build up cash in the bank) is also subject to this "dormancy cost".
It's only when you reach the tech you are researching that you get the utility for all those commerce that you built up during previous turns.

 

[Anysense]

It will be very difficult to make anything more definite than a general rule "first build stuff that pays back faster" out of it. And there are examples when storing hundreds, even thousands of hammers for many turns is more beneficial than using those hammers immideately. I think the most common examples are preparing failgold and prewhipping mounted units for a massive cuirs breakout. This is the brilliance of Civ4 - this game is never going to be "solved" and you have to keep thinking, trying to develop concepts that make certain parts of the game a bit clearer.

 

[Powerfaker]

Would this idea of dormant X not reject failgold projects as inefficient? It's possible you have wait quite long for your invested H to be released in a double (or more) pocket of gold. Or else, how long waiting time would be acceptable?

 

[sampsa]

Failgold can be inefficient sometimes, if you have no control on when you gain it. Of course, 1->2 itself is often rather efficient.

 

[krikav]

@Powerfaker
IF one accepts that the return you "should" get on something is 5% per turn, then 1->2 is justified only if you get the gold in less than 14 turns.


I know that I have had games practically destroyed, because I was waiting for failgold that never showed up, so it surely can be inefficient sometimes too.

@Anysense yes, clearly there are many many exceptions, the game is way to complex to be solved by such a simplistic metric as the one sketched out here.
"first build stuff that pays back faster" is close to what I'm getting at here. I think it is also paired with something like "only do one thing at the time, do it fast and in bursts."

 

[Major Tom]

Interesting. Dormant hammers may or may not be a bad thing. But one thing I pondering about, working fish early is often demoted by many. How is the rate of return with chopping a boat (and perhaps grow an extra citizen) before starting settler? (Looking forward to see how @Undefeatable fish start in cb1 evolved).

 

[krikav]

To theorize around the rate of return from chopping a boat, we need more information. But "growing an extra citizen before starting settler" can be interesting.


I assume a city with dry corn and infinite with forested grasslands (2F 1H).
At pop3, our F+H production rate is 2F from city center, 3F from dry corn, 1H from city center, 1H from forest #1 and 1H from forest#2, total of 8 H+F.

Growing an extra population would enable us to work another forested grassland, and would raise our production rate by 1H/turn for a total of 9H+F / Turn.
It requires 26F to grow that pop, if we assume that there is at least 1F in the bank, this takes 5 turns since we net 5F/turn.

A settler (disregarding commerce) we get at least 4H/Turn from once it has settled a city (just settling on grassland, working a forest). 2F from city center, 1H from city center, 1H from working grassland forest. (2+1+1=4)
So settler is 4H/Turn gain, for a 100H investment. or 25 Hammers invested for each hammer per turn gain.

Just a mental calculation, the dormancy penalty should be a handful of hammers higher for the settler build, since it's likely to be more turns to build, and it's more hammers invested. So add 5 hammers on the settler for this.
105 / 4 = 26,25 for settler.
26/1 = 26 for grow 1 pop.

So very close call. These calculations doesn't really give us any aid when making a judgement of what might be considered better.
Why does the common wisdom suggest that building settler at pop3 instead of growing to pop4 is best?

* Settler out earlier to settle contested areas.
* Can't really discount commerce completely.
* 2City can likely work better than fourth citizen can.
* 2City can also grow more citizens, and faster since it only costs 22F to grow from 1->2 while it costs 26 to grow from 3->4.

 

[krikav]

Regarding the infamous fish-city example from Cookbook#1 what is demoted in this the higher investment required.
30H for monument first, and then at least 10 more turns working a non-resource tile.

Here, we might really consider the hammers invested in monument as dormant, and assign them the dormancy penalty. We have to invest 30H and then wait at least 10 turns until we get the gain we want.
With the assumption that a hammer invested should give us a gain of 5% per turn, the initial 30H in the monument should give you a gain of 30*0.05 = 1.5H/turn. And since it's a full 10 turns the "dormancy penalty" of the monument is 15 hammers.
So the true cost of the monument might be closer to 45.
Thats IF you can land a 30H chop immediatly. If you are slowbuilding it, it's even worse!

Likewise... the 100 hammers invested in the settler also have to sit dormant for 10 turns before being able to work the fish. Now those 100 hammers are actually giving their close to 5% return already from city center, but compared with a city with fish in the first ring, they are performing worse.

 

[Bibor]

"first build stuff that pays back faster" is close to what I'm getting at here. I think it is also paired with something like "only do one thing at the time, do it fast and in bursts."

Yes, exactly what I said, just worded differently

There are only two types of actions in civ4:
1) actions you want completed as soon as possible
2) actions you want completed at an exact moment

 

[elmurcis]

Comment in other thread (Cookbook #1 about early Golden Age) together with some other stuff (snowball effect, how to get investments to pay back faster to actually start make profit etc.) made me to situation like in current game with early GA.
Interesting stuff as from 1st glance it might seem as "maybe it really is too early as there is not that big number of tiles worked?". But as long as it don't make conflict with overall GP production (for main stuff - no matter if its going for Lib or iso-Astro), using GA to use as part of plan to get out of deep economy "crisis" situation (synchronice with REX to boost initial Granary (not every city can have chops) to get it online faster so city can start working decent tiles) can be better than "crawling like turtle" until empire is "ready" but... too late for stuff. Also early GA gives higher % boost to overal empire output as cottages are still small and even cities center tile boost will have significant impact (1H1C vs 2H2C).
In current game (Huge/multi landmass/Mara/NTT/Imm with 17 AI) used GA (MoM boosted - not sure how MoM impact on game changes when look to Mara vs Normal speed) for supporting initial REX from 8 to 18 cities (before 1 AD), post Astro (used GA as main part of GPP production to get out 2 GS for Astro bulb) non-GA REX from 18 to 36; using 2nd GA from 2GP with additional 3rd GA from TajMahal to REX from 36 to 58 cities (run out of spots to settle non-war style overal number of cities on map should be around 200-220) and to get to SProperty without building any Courthouses (good tip from @Undefeatable) - although cities maintence cost is over 900 gold/turn, new small cities just don't have time and chance to get CH done (maybe will do if game turns in favor for Mining+Sushi, depending on GPeople situation - just plan B) and using Serfdom turns out to really useful at this moment (quick new land improvement with less overall worker number required)).
Saved and quit after settling final (peace-full) city and improving all food that did require special attention with SP safe to reach before end of 3rd GA, so had to put down some thoughts about this before next long game session (big game needs a lot of stuff in my own memory - previous session was like 5 hrs non-stop ) overwrite feeling with some late-game stuff that is little bit more boring but gives rewards from early game decisions (and it all started with "isn't this too early?" Golden Age).
Sorry for long post

 

[krikav]

Yes, I think alot can be said for an early GA.
Especially with SPI leaders, else you tend to want your GAs reserved for civic switches. But with SPI that problem is non existant.

When I saw the effects of the GA my cookbook#1 save I was kind of amazed.

I think I will try out this strategy more on purpose, there could be something interesting lurking here...
Expand eponentially w/o regard of maintenence completely, grabbing much more land than is sane.
Then use GA to climb the previously insurmountable hill toward currency.

Another thing I have noticed with GAs in general, is that they are so lovely with tiles yielding both hammers and commerce, such as riverside plains or hills, or moai cities.