Why do you say that, apart from the +1
for workshops? I find myself staying in Slavery and not actively pursuing Caste System anymore... So if i missed something, let me know =P
Slavery is a very useful civic, probably the most useful one in the game as it comes early and is a way to get an efficient hammer production in cities without hills or with very few hills. It is a civic that allows you to efficiently transform food into hammers (if you have a granary) by poprushing citizens. It also allows you to do something useful with excess population points in cities that can't be stopped growing.
Workshops effectively do the same. They lower the food count on a flatland tile and increase the hammer count on a flatland tile, effectively transforming food into hammers. The reason why workshops are seen as a poor tile is that they do this transformation process relatively poorly, the conversion factor is bad. What caste system now does is improve the conversion factor. This actually makes caste system a competitor for slavery to produce hammers in cities with a low number of hills.
An example comparison of slavery and caste system at normal speed in the mid game. Slavery is most efficient when used to poprush 2 citizens because if you time it well, then you can immediately regrow 1 of those citizens and won't suffer any unhappiness while regrowing to the happy cap.
The happy/health cap in this city is reached at size 12.
Tech level: guilds has been discovered, so workshops have a basic output of -1 food + 2 hammers. Workshops give -1 food, +3 hammers in caste system. A grassland workshop will produce 1 food, 3 hammers in this civic.
The city is size 11, about to become size 12. It's at 41/42 food.
With the slavery civic and the caste system civic, the city will use 9 identical tiles with a net food output of +3 and an undetermined hammer and commerce yield. The 10-th, 11-th and 12-th tile being used by the caste system city are all three grassland workshops each with an output of +1 food, +3 hammers. In the slavery civic, the 10-th tile is a grassland farm (3 food) and the 11-th a grassland village (2 food, 3 commerce). The city has a granary to facilitate fast regrowth for the slavery civic.
I will compare the yield of the citizens working the last three tiles of the city plus the poprushing yield in the caste system and the slavery civic.
Slavery:
turn 0: poprush 2 citizens for 60 hammers, size 9 41/38 food, 3 food per turn
turn 1 size 10, 25/40 food, 4 food per turn
turn 4 size 10, 37/40 food, 4 food per turn
turn 5 size 11, 21/42 food, 4 food per turn, 3 commerce per turn
turn 9, size 11, 37/42 food, 4 food per turn, 3 commerce per turn
turn 10 size 11, 41/42 food, 4 food per turn, 3 commerce per turn
This is an ideal situation for the slavery civic. A perfectly timed regrowth to size to get another poprush and a minimal number of unused tiles during regrowth. Not always can you get such an ideal regrowth scenario and not always will there be something useful to poprush for exactly 2 citizens. You don't want to start poprushing stuff that you don't need just so that you can get a 2 pop poprush. Usually, the situation is less ideal than this.
In the above situation, you'll get 60 hammers and 15 commerce in a poprush cycle (turn 0-turn 9).
Caste System:
turn 0, size 11 41/42 food, 1 food per turn, 6 hammers per turn
turn 1, size 12, 21/44 food, 0 food per turn, 9 hammers per turn
turn 9, size 12, 21/44 food, 0 food per turn, 9 hammers per turn
This will give you 87 hammers and 0 commerce in this 10 turn period.
1 hammer is more valuable than 1 commerce. I could have used a village instead of a workshop in the caste system situation to get more commerce and less hammers. It would have resulted in 57 hammers and 30 commerce and 10 food growth.
So in this theoretical situation, caste system perform better. The reason is because the city is already quite large and thus requires quite a lot of food to regrow. So the food-hammer conversion created by poprushing isn't that great. At lower city sizes, slavery will be more efficient than in this situation and at higher city sizes, it will be less efficient. We did use an ideal regrowth scenario for the poprushing situation.
Caste system also has the unlimited scientists, merchants and artists advantage. This can be used to easily get some great person farms in high food cities.
As said before in this thread, caste system combines nicely with state property because both civics improve the workshop, making it a very powerful terrain improvement. A late game state property/caste system grassland workshop gives 2 food and 4 hammers, a plains workshop 1 food and 5 hammers.
While some discussion about caste system versus slavery is very interesting, I really started this thread to get a formula describing the unhappiness created by the emancipation civic. Can anyone help me with that?
for workshops? I find myself staying in Slavery and not actively pursuing Caste System anymore... So if i missed something, let me know =P
