Faster unit production

I would like to know what it the most efficient way to produce armies.
Some questions:
1. Is it wise to focus all the modifiers on one city? Like many hills, forge, heroic epic and even military academy? Or will that lead to over-production with too much hammers even for the best available unit what produces some kind of endless overflow?
2. Do you use HE city for the most expensive units or for those that benefit most from additional exp points from a settled GG?
3. Can someone explain the whip mechanic that @Sullla is displaying in his AW game? Having less than 5 base production allows you to whip one axe/spear for 2 pop what will produce nearly as much overflow for a second unit right after. I can just tell you what he told, I don't understand at all.
4. How would you define a good unit production city? How do you identify that on a map?
5. Is it generally wise to whip away commerce-less mines as they don't contribute anything else than hammers to produce something you can get even sooner through whipping...? It took me almost 2 years to get behind that weird logic and I wonder if it is a rule of thumb. Even a 1F/3H mine doesn't contribute nothing else than half a pop who works only hammers, right?

Thanks for more inspiration.

 

1. I've never come across the problem of endless overflow although I've had cities in the late game that produce Modern Armour in one turn even without overflow so in that case the extra hammers are wasted. And of course any overflow is wasted as well if you keep building cheap units and the overflow has nowhere to go.

2. I can't say. Almost all units can benefit from extra XP. Haven't put much thought into this one actually.

3. Well an Axe costs 35 hammers so say your city makes 4 hammers per turn. After one turn you need 31 hammers to finish the Axe and since it's more than 30 hammers it requires a 2-pop rush. You slave it for 2-pop and make 60 hammers. 31 hammers go into the current Axe, 29 is overflow and goes into the next Axe which now only needs 6 hammers to finish. I do this all the time.

4. Early in the game, it's a city with a few great food sources and a bunch of metals or stone/marble. Mining and quarrying those makes some serious hammers. I remember a game from a while back where I had a capital with 3 food resources, two Iron, and Stone plus a few plains hills. Of course this is not counting chops and whips which are best modes of early production. Midgame I'd say a riverside city again with maybe one or two food resources dotted with workshops while running SP + CS.

5. Sure.

 

As a rule a city needs 6-8 food surplus to produce units. Less than 6 is to little and more 8 usually makes no sense, because you will simply whip that city into unhappiness too soon. Any 5-6 food resource + green farms or mines will do, 3 farmed floodplains also make for a decent production city. On the whole, food is better than hammers but there is limit to how much food you can use, depending on resources.

 

There are rules to everything, I had no idea. Good explanations from you guys, especially the whip-mechanics.
I was suspecting that one-pop equals for 30H as you can whip monument and expansive granaries but never became aware of it.
Will count a bit more food in my cities.

 

Most of the time, it works pretty well. Is it possible that the mechanic is interfered by a forge? I was building 3H and next turn I wanted to whip the Vulture (= axeman). In the production bar was stated that 3/35 hammers are finished but it wanted me to enslave only 1 pop. Must have something to do with the forge (even if the bonus does not apply to 3H only) because in other situations it works well.

 

That is correct. Forges make 1 pop for a whip worth 42 hammers instead of 30. So you can't 2-pop axes or swords anymore.

 

I think you mean 2pop there, Fish. Technically, you can 2pop a sword with a forge with a maximum of 2h into production.

tobi - here's a link to a post (with more links) I wrote up a long time ago with some basic primers on whipping:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/going-from-noble-tooo.468987/#post-11671673

I don't totally agree with Anysense on there being some rule on food surplus an whipping units. More food surplus (with granary) simply means you will be able to whip more units faster, since you grow faster. Growing too fast is never a bad thing..ha...and unhappy citizens equal 30h just like happy ones. Regardless of a city's food surplus I'm going to whip units wherever I can if I need to.

 

Fixed. I really need to sleep properly.

Also...agreed. In the mid-game happiness generally becomes pretty readily available, so if your cities are low pop you can stack like 10 whip anger and be fine because your city's 6 pop but you have 18 happy from resource trades and HR and religion and stuff.

 

The trouble is, they don't work! If you keep whipping like that, than soon there will be no food enough to grow further than size 2 or 3. Besides, you probably want to keep your economy afloat, preferably teching at a decent rate. Whipping all your cities to the ground may be sensible in certain very desperate situations, but in most cases you will be shooting yourself in the foot by doing so.

 

Cool, I will read further instructions. When a forge gives +25%H, why does a 1-pop-whip equal 42H and not 37,5?

 

Because I’m an idiot who can’t do math .

 

And I was already baptized alleged math teacher here, so we come from two completely different universes

 

If I understand right, for an efficient whip, i can do any combination of units/base production as long as I make the whip shortly before the unit needs LESS than 30 hammers for completion. So optimum would be to need 31 hammers for completion, no matter what unit. When I whip now, I will have maximum oveflow of 29H that go directly in my next project. Having a forge makes it more troublesome to calculate everything but the principle stays the same right?

 

Correct. If you're ever at a loss as to how much base one whipped pop is worth, incidentally, the base of one whipped pop is equal to the generated by one BFC Math chop. Or half the cost of building a Granary, if that's easier to remember.

 

I would say that my gameplay has improved a lot after using the whip-mechanic more consciously. It's not only for unit production. When I want to finish something like a library or a lighthouse, I can see now if more food or more hammers bring me closer to a whip, depending on the level of the food/production bar. So before it was like "how long does it still take before I can whip?" and now it's like "can do that in 2 turns, great".

 

With BUG mod you can see what overflow would be next turn (with current production performance??):



In my case it is 30. BAD case. Instead of overflow I'll get one less citizen to whip. I need to reduce Hummer income by 1 (micro, now or on next step). BUG mode helps to plan overflow by providing what you'll get next step!!! Hovering over whip button shows current overflow, then you decide - now or later!

My understanding is that 1 citizen converts to 30H.

You can't overflow more than 29H.

But overflow is a subject of multipliers. Forge can transform 29H into 36H!! Pure citizens aren't subject of multipliers.

So maximizing overflow is better than pure citizen to hammer conversion when:

* you have Forge
* you are Industrious and overflow is directed to Wonder (+50%!)
* you are Imperialistic and overflow is directed to Settler (+50%!)
* you are Expensive and overflow is directed to Worker (+25%!)
* you possess +100% Wonder boost resource and direct overflow into Wonder
* you direct overflow into special building of your leader's trait

Because of Granary Food x2 => H. But you can increase this when your target meets one of the above condition.

Military unit production has H multipliers too:

* Military Academy (+50%)
* Heroic Epic (+100%)

 

That would be the ideal case to dedicate every chop/overflow to some building/unit you have mulitipliers on. I try to do that but sometimes, you need urgently units, especially in those AW games.

 

I'd like to use this opportunity to rant about how counter-intuitive it is that production modifiers add to whipping but not to money buying. If Emancipation wasn't a factor, using Slavery would actually be more efficient in fully industrialized cities than buying stuff with Universal Suffrage, the efficiency of which decreases the more production modifiers a city already has.

 

I often will build HE in the best production city I can, and save the Ironworks/West Point combo for a later point in the game where I have enough territory to put it in an optimal location. I also like to play Chm leaders which make adding more promotions easier. Last game I had 2 cities cranking out Modern Armor, Mech Infantry, Mobile Artillery, Gunships, Stealth Bombers, and Jet Fighters in 2-3 turns with 4 promotions - one had the Heroic Epic, the other had Ironworks and West Point. Occasionally AI capitals have enough hammers and GGs to provide more cities that can crank out highly-promoted units.

 

Yeah, if it's the other continent and has some wars on it, someone's cap has 4 or 5 GGs settled in it and is advanced enough to build so wonders.