For how long do you whip? (Slavery)

[Iranon]

Whipping isn't too attractive in the midgame: Caps are generous enough that 1 food whipped isn't worth more than 2 hammers any more, there is less urgency (whipping beats production if you aren't waiting until you are at your cap, for example when your new cities are busy churning out even more settlers or courthouses to stave off a financial crisis) and you don't have the lategame tools like Bio Farms, the Kremlin or food corporations to make whipping attractive again.

Exception: some newly acquired cities. Those might have unhappy citizens or require a culture source straight away so you're using a resource that's not currently doing anything.

*

Generally, I prefer Slavery over Caste System, but then I prefer well balanced cities if I can secure a decent amount of land... Slavery allows me to set up my cities for specialist use and still get useful infrastructure fast enough.

Caste System on the other hand is attractive for heavy specialisation... you can turn a foodball field into a production city if needed (all Slavery allows is a good mix between production and economy) and allows you to postpone a lot of infrastructure in specialist cities if you care more about the GPP than the direct output.

 

[AveiMil]

Thanks everyone for the replies, they've been helpfull.

 

[petey]

Whipping's great during a war and allows you to put a Theatre and a Courthouse in the captured cities relatively quickly while getting rid of the unhappy part of the population. Also, if you find you're getting spread too thin, you can quickly produce a bunch of troops from your main cities in order to continue the advance.

If I'm going for any kind of military victory, I just stay in slavery for the whole game.

 

[mirthadir]

This only compares Biology farms with workshops. What about all the other cities with other sources of food as well as farms or instead of farms? Like seafood and other resources they lose a lot of production with Caste System and would have to run specialists all the time. How do you deal with the food corporations when SP is replaced by Mercantilism or Free Trade? Workshops don't help with those situations. Also I combine whipping with drafting, in most cities, doing both in the 10 turn cycle and soaking up excess food running spies.


Correct, Kremlin is important for the late game Slavery strategy. And I do use many small cities which increases food efficiency for drafting and whipping. At a city size of 10 each food is worth 1.5 hammers when used for Slavery and a Biology grassland farm can produce a food surplus of 2 (= 3 hammers). This compares with using the grassland as a workshop giving 4 hammers. However, the Kremlin +50% bonus applies to whipping ( = 4.5 hammers) and not to workshops so the farm is more productive when used with Slavery.


I can't imagine why a late game SE would want to run a lot of scientists. They are not very efficient compared with spies, AW priests or merchants (assuming a trade mission is possible).

Overall, I find late game Slavery is much more flexible than the workshop route and just as productive, if not more so.

Food corporations can feed WSs just fine. A caste WS is superior to a bio farm whip unless you have the Kremlin when you have strong food corps. I never understand people who say they don't run caste WSs unless they are in SP. Once you get more than +20 food from a Corps SP gives you nothing for food and you can get the same exact yield off the WSs under FM.

As an added bonus you can, you know, work these if you lack access to irrigation. Maybe it is map settings but I find that far more often I have more green tiles that I can't irrigate than surplus food I can't use.

 

[JammerUno]

If you set up your empire to favour slavery later on, with alot of BFCs overlapping and working only 10 tiles, slavery will be better. I would then ask what to do in the mid-game, since smaller cities, pre-bio and the kremlin, eat up hammers to get the infra to match big CS cities in btp/commerce output, have far higher upkeep, and will be hard pressed to get the same number of GP. So to utilise slavery later on you have to sacrifice alot mid-game. ICS died with CivIII, and there's a reason for that, 9 tiles per city isn't the best solution.

If you're not using a form of ICS, you're not comparing production on a tile-to-tile basis, but on a city-to-city basis. And I'm fairly certain a CS/SP city working 20 tiles with as many workshops and mines as the food allows will out-produce a kremlin/bio powered whipping city at size 10.

And that leads me to believe slavery isn't usually the best option late game (sometimes you just need a s**tload of hammers pronto though, then it's good to have as an option)

 

[UncleJJ]

If you set up your empire to favour slavery later on, with alot of BFCs overlapping and working only 10 tiles, slavery will be better. I would then ask what to do in the mid-game, since smaller cities, pre-bio and the kremlin, eat up hammers to get the infra to match big CS cities in btp/commerce output, have far higher upkeep, and will be hard pressed to get the same number of GP. So to utilise slavery later on you have to sacrifice alot mid-game. ICS died with CivIII, and there's a reason for that, 9 tiles per city isn't the best solution.

If you're not using a form of ICS, you're not comparing production on a tile-to-tile basis, but on a city-to-city basis. And I'm fairly certain a CS/SP city working 20 tiles with as many workshops and mines as the food allows will out-produce a kremlin/bio powered whipping city at size 10.

And that leads me to believe slavery isn't usually the best option late game (sometimes you just need a s**tload of hammers pronto though, then it's good to have as an option)

I don't use ICS as I never played Civ 3. But I do have a strategy that uses some small cities working only 6 to 8 tiles. I also use a few large cities in the best sites and these produce the bulk of my research and gold. The small cities just fill in the gaps and make the most of every opportunity. There would also be medium sized cities in my empire depending on the terrain.

By the time I get Biology and Communism I already have a large army and will be busy conquering new territory based around cannons, and galleons on water maps. I have a large number of small cities (self founded filler cities and captured ones) that have little useful to do other than produce troops, espionage buildings and missionaries. Even if I could switch to SP / CS and turn my large cities into workshop heavy production centres, why would I? What would the small cities do they are better at production and espionage than research.

The main problem I have with the workshop strategy is that it only works for a few cities. Workshops need flat land and that can be used for farms or cottages as well. What about all the other cities that don't have much flat land? I have never had a single city that could have 20 workshops / watermills so that is just imaginary and a false comparison as far as I'm concerned. Sometimes when I used a "workshop strategy" I have managed to build 3 size 14 cities with plenty of workshops (and some hills etc) with factories and and the whole hog and a few other cities that have turned some farms and cottages (not towns) into workshops. But they will be 3 cities among 25. They surely did produce a lot of hammers and more than they could with under Slavery but at the cost of the other 22 cities being less effective since they did not have workshops. I am of course looking at this from the perspective of a warfare and a domination type game. I guess if you were going for another victory condition and particularly Space then having a large city or two with lots workshops looks much more attractive.

I find that combining SP with Slavery and Nationhood with Biology farms on flat land is better than workshops with SP / CS. At least on most of the maps I play. I am not averse to workshops or CS in principle it is just that they are less useful to the majority of my cities and Slavery with Kremlin is good nearly everywhere if the situation has been anticipated. Spare food not needed for drafting or slavery can be used to run specialists with Spy specialists being particularly effective.

 

[Iranon]

@ JammerUno: Per-city-bonuses like trade routes, religious wonders + temples, free specialists, espionage infrastructure and possibly the outputs of corporations can FAR outstrip the additional maintenance paid for more cities. Before that, Nationhood allows you to meet your military needs for a pittance in a very ICS-friendly way (to use it to its maximum sustainable potential, you would require 30 cities small enough not to be bothered by the happy cap; those cities do not require much in the way of infrastructure).

Whether it's worth bothering with differs from game to game... I usually feel it is, but sometimes I'll happily stick to the basics and avoid my usual ton of filler cities (usually if I'm gearing up for war and dallying gives my target the opportunity to get their military up to date).

One of the limitations of whipping is that you can't turn all the excess food into production directly... assuming you want to work all useful tiles all the time, you will be converting some of it into something else by running specialists. So in a 12-to-9 whip, some of the excess farms will give 4.5 hammers (more efficient that workshops) but some will simply give the output of a specialist (probably engineer or Angkor Wat Priest... good overall but not a straight production monster).

As such, a size 20 workshop city can get more production than 2 size 10 whipping cities, but the latter one can get mix of raw beakers and hammers that would not be attainable for a size 20 city using either method.

*

In the end, soft factors will matter more than efficiency. Kremlin-assisted whipping fits nicely into a long-term approach with lots of shiny wonders and balanced infrastructure-heavy cities while giving me the opportunity to wreck my empire for an incredible boost of production if the need arises. Much more up my alley than CS workshops, although the ability to elegantly specialise every city will appeal to others.

 

[mirthadir]

I don't use ICS as I never played Civ 3. But I do have a strategy that uses some small cities working only 6 to 8 tiles. I also use a few large cities in the best sites and these produce the bulk of my research and gold. The small cities just fill in the gaps and make the most of every opportunity. There would also be medium sized cities in my empire depending on the terrain.

By the time I get Biology and Communism I already have a large army and will be busy conquering new territory based around cannons, and galleons on water maps. I have a large number of small cities (self founded filler cities and captured ones) that have little useful to do other than produce troops, espionage buildings and missionaries. Even if I could switch to SP / CS and turn my large cities into workshop heavy production centres, why would I? What would the small cities do they are better at production and espionage than research.

The main problem I have with the workshop strategy is that it only works for a few cities. Workshops need flat land and that can be used for farms or cottages as well. What about all the other cities that don't have much flat land? I have never had a single city that could have 20 workshops / watermills so that is just imaginary and a false comparison as far as I'm concerned. Sometimes when I used a "workshop strategy" I have managed to build 3 size 14 cities with plenty of workshops (and some hills etc) with factories and and the whole hog and a few other cities that have turned some farms and cottages (not towns) into workshops. But they will be 3 cities among 25. They surely did produce a lot of hammers and more than they could with under Slavery but at the cost of the other 22 cities being less effective since they did not have workshops. I am of course looking at this from the perspective of a warfare and a domination type game. I guess if you were going for another victory condition and particularly Space then having a large city or two with lots workshops looks much more attractive.

I find that combining SP with Slavery and Nationhood with Biology farms on flat land is better than workshops with SP / CS. At least on most of the maps I play. I am not averse to workshops or CS in principle it is just that they are less useful to the majority of my cities and Slavery with Kremlin is good nearly everywhere if the situation has been anticipated. Spare food not needed for drafting or slavery can be used to run specialists with Spy specialists being particularly effective.

Flip your small cities into mass WS/Windmills (assuming SP) and have them hammer out wealth or research after getting grain/forge/factory/power/CH up if you don't want more units, otherwise have them hammer suicide units (particularly effective in PS). A SP WS produces 4.4 modded up to 8.8 (for instance) whereas a spy spec gives you 8 EP with all buildings (9 with castle xor nat) and potentially 10 (nat + castle). Of course seeing as this is, by definition, marginal territory we hit the problem that the land may not be irrigateable (which drops our potential EP/food yield to 5 at best), may be hills which preclude spy specs, or may have resources which more often are things like desert oil or plains hill coal/U/Al/coal which all which give you better return on a focus than a food for a city. Hammering gold/research will allow you to up the EP slider and use your core multipliers more efficiently if you really want EP.

At the end of the day your bio farm is 3 and some EP from the specs (perhaps a bit of science, but not much if you aren't building multipliers); 33% more from the same tile is nothing at which to sneeze, particularly if you have SP and PS running (2.35 per turn net) In a 4 tile minor city that gives you an additional cannon every 10 turns (or the typical whip sustained whip cycle).

Its a map thing and I find that far more often I have more land (islands, hill blocked, desert bordering, etc.) that I simply cannot irrigate than I have spare food resources. By the time I'm at communism/bio either cottages or workshops tend to look better to me. Likewise my marginal resources tend not to be food, but more often resources.

 

[UncleJJ]

Flip your small cities into mass WS/Windmills (assuming SP) and have them hammer out wealth or research after getting grain/forge/factory/power/CH up if you don't want more units, otherwise have them hammer suicide units (particularly effective in PS). A SP WS produces 4.4 modded up to 8.8 (for instance) whereas a spy spec gives you 8 EP with all buildings (9 with castle xor nat) and potentially 10 (nat + castle). Of course seeing as this is, by definition, marginal territory we hit the problem that the land may not be irrigateable (which drops our potential EP/food yield to 5 at best), may be hills which preclude spy specs, or may have resources which more often are things like desert oil or plains hill coal/U/Al/coal which all which give you better return on a focus than a food for a city. Hammering gold/research will allow you to up the EP slider and use your core multipliers more efficiently if you really want EP.

At the end of the day your bio farm is 3 and some EP from the specs (perhaps a bit of science, but not much if you aren't building multipliers); 33% more from the same tile is nothing at which to sneeze, particularly if you have SP and PS running (2.35 per turn net) In a 4 tile minor city that gives you an additional cannon every 10 turns (or the typical whip sustained whip cycle).

Its a map thing and I find that far more often I have more land (islands, hill blocked, desert bordering, etc.) that I simply cannot irrigate than I have spare food resources. By the time I'm at communism/bio either cottages or workshops tend to look better to me. Likewise my marginal resources tend not to be food, but more often resources.

You seem to be mixing several things together that really aren't a problem.

Firstly, we need only consider cities that can be irrigated. I only build farms in those and workshops or cottages where irrigation is not possible. My workshops will be the same as yours except they lose 1 hammer from CS - a small price to pay given the few workshops I use and the relative rarity of such cities.

Your calculations on a per tile basis is leading you astray and your analysis is not giving correct outcomes. We need to do calculations at the level of a city since the whipping and drafting restrictions are affected by city size and only a limited number can be used in a given time period without incurring excessive unhappiness.

So let's take an example city and study it over a whipping-drafting cycle of 10 turns and then compare its output with a workshop alternative. The city I have chosen is distinctly unimpressive at first sight and many players would not even settle it. It only has access to 6 tiles, 3 grasslands and 3 plains with remaining tiles in the BFC either useless or belonging to other cities.

Early in the game (pre Biology / Communism) this city produces +5 food and up to 4 base hammers (5 with forge). Under Slavery and Nationhood it can be used to draft a musket and whip a cannon while putting spare hammers and overflow into a mace. Drafting at size 6 costs 15 food. A cannon with 5 hammers invested will be a 3 pop whip with significant overflow of 23 hammers which carries into the mace. If we assume a whip from size 7 to size 4 it costs 14, 15 and 16 food to regrow which takes 9 turns and there is some loss of hammers from the plains farms. So over a 12 turn cycle we whip a cannon and draft a musket and put hammers into mace. The mace will get 23 hammers and a varying amount depending on how many plains farms are worked that I can't be bothered to analyse in detail.

Without SP to boost food there is no need to do a workshop analysis for the city at this stage.

Later when we have Biology and Communism the same city gets a huge boost of another 6 food and the 10% from SP. We'll assume Kremlin has not been built, initially. With +11 food the city can support the drafting of a rifleman and 3 pop whipping of a cannon on a 10 turn cycle and the excess food is used used to run spy specialists. The intelligence agency and jail have been added to the city to provide slots and EP %bonus. Let's analyse the food usage:

Spoiler :

Food income 110 food over 10 turns
Draft at size 8 = 17 food
3 pop Whip from size 9 to 6 requires 16, 17, 18 = 51 food
42 Spare food used to feed specialists for 22 specialist turns

The 22 specialist turns will each give 9 EPs and 5 beakers (with Rep and a Library) for 198 Eps and 110 beakers. A 3 pop whip with forge and SP will give 121 hammers and the plains farms will now be worked all the time giving another 50 hammers. So a cannon and a mace (or equivalent) are produced in 10 turns as well as a draft rifle (worth 110 hammers).

Let's see what an identical workshop city can produce at this time. The grasslands can be turned to workshops and 2 plains but 1 plains stays as a farm to give an overall +1 food. The total hammer output would be 12 + 1 + 1 + 10 = 24 and the forge and SP bonus would give 32 output hammers. Assuming you are running Nationhood the +1 food allows a rifleman draft every 16 turns = 6.8 hammers/ turn or 68 averaged over the 10 turns.

So comparing the two cities we get:

Workshop: 320 hammers + 68 draft hammers = 388 hammers
Slavery: 121 + 50 + 110 = 281 hammers + 198 EPs + 110 beakers.
Running an engineer instead of a spy for 10 turns would add 30 hammers for loss of 90 EPs and 13 beakers.

Now let's add Kremlin into the picture and with Assembly Line and Artillery increase the hammer cost of the troops. The workshop city might build a factory and coal plant but so could the Slavery city. For the sake of the comparison we will assume either they both do or neither do and the production bonus essentially cancels. The same can be argued for the use of PS, which is usually adopted for WW reasons rather than the production bonus.

The food analysis for the farmed city becomes:

Spoiler :

Draft infantry at size 8 costs 16 + 17 = 33 food
3 pop whip from size 9 to 6 requires 16, 17, 18 = 51 food
26 spare food used to feed specialists for 13 turns.

A 3 pop whip with Kremlin will give 135 base hammers and with forge and SP this becomes 182.

The workshop case is now the same as before, except the draft of an infantry is more difficult due to the low food surplus and the need to lose a plains workshop if a draft from size 7 is done. The city will need 15 food to regrow which with a mere 2 food surplus could take 8 turns. Is a draft infantry worth the disruption and loss of workshop hammers? I'll assume it is not for now. The +1 food is therefore used to run an engineer specialist 33% of the time = 1 hammer on average.

So comparing the two cities again we get:

Workshop: 320 hammers + 10 from part time engineer = 330
Slavery: 182 + 50 + 140 = 372 hammers, plus 117 EPs and 65 beakers.

In peacetime the two cities can be run to produce wealth and EPs etc. instead of hammers and units.

The farms will now provide enough food to run an average of 5.5 spies, thats an alteration of 5 spies with +1 food and 6 with -1 food and the pop being whipped or drafted away periodically. At size 11 the city can support 5 spies giving 45 EPs and 25 beakers per turn and build 5 wealth for a total of 75 output.

The workshop city can build 33 wealth. The farms / specialists are more than twice as good. The workshops would almost certainly build the factory and coal plant in this situation (costs 450 hammers) and then the wealth will increase by 18 to 51 so it still loses out heavilly even after a lot of extra investment.

I was going to add an analysis of a simple coastal city with a single clam and 11 coastal tiles and no other useful tiles (ice or tundra perhaps). But suffice it to say that whipping a battleship every 10 turns or so (Kremlin, Drydock, forge and SP) should impress you enough to realise that the CS/SP civic combination does this little gem no favours. Between battleships it can either draft or run a few spy specialists making a flexible use of its limited 5 food surplus.

Overall, as long as your game is orientated towards the effective combination of espionage and warfare then the combination of Slavery, Nationhood, SP with Kremlin and spy specialists beats workshops with SP/CS by a considerable margin. This happens over a long period of time during the critical transition from the pre Biology period when cannons and muskets are the best available troops through to the late game when whipping tanks and other large value items just makes the Kremlin more efficient. It's more flexible, you get a bigger army quicker and have lots of espionage to ensure you know what the AI is doing or to steal techs or disrupt civics and religions. And finally many more of your cities can have useful production both for their own infrastructure and extra units, flat land for workshops is not needed so many more city sites are useful.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

At size 11 the city can support 5 spies giving 45 EPs and 25 beakers per turn and build 5 wealth for a total of 75 output.

The workshop city can build 33 wealth. The farms / specialists are more than twice as good.

Aren't you comparing a size 11 city with 6 farms and 5 spies with one running 5 workshops and a farm? (size 11 vs size 6) I agree with your other examples (when building units)
Otherwise, great analysis!

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

 

[UncleJJ]

Yes, that is the comparison being made.

So there are some minor consequences of having 5 more pop like an increase in civic costs, better trade income and more votes in the AP and UN. But I was simply comparing the differences in wealth, EPs and beakers.

And thanks

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Yes, that is the comparison being made.

So there are some minor consequences of having 5 more pop like an increase in civic costs, better trade income and more votes in the AP and UN. But I was simply comparing the differences in wealth, EPs and beakers.

Yes, but my point is that you compare two cities size 6 while building units (well, the FE city size is variable but...), then magically one gains 5 pop asa the war is over . I guess what I wanna say is that there is a transition period between the two comparaisons, while farm city goes from size 6 to 11. While doing so, the output of the farm city is nearly 0 (well, 4 beakers/3 EPs size 7, 8 beakers/6 EPs size 8...). I think you should include it so it doesn't look magical . (and your welcome! I made 2 SGs inspired by one of your discussion...)

 

[Grey Fox]

-Whip wonders to completion in a close race
-Whip axemen, swordsmen, catapults, war eles, etc.
-Whip workers and settlers
-Whip galleys if you see a barbarian galley
-Whip universities for Oxford if your 5th and 6th cities are slow on production
-Whip theatres for fast Globe Theatre

etc.


EDIT: Whipping courthouses, etc. in captured cities is nice if the population is high enough.

This. Though I'd rather ignore Barbarian galleys and wait for Triremes. Unless I rely on the seafood, then I might have to whip a galley or two.
+

Once the city is size 6-7+ and you have guilds, caste + workshops starts overtaking the whip. I think around pop 10 even w/o guilds the workshops are more efficient (!). I haven't done the math for a while so it might be a bit less.

The kremlin makes the whip competitive again. There's also the option to pack cities closely, keep them small, and whip them that way, which compensates against the larger-pop workshop cities.

But if you want a TON of scientists your only choice is caste, so in that case you'll be using workshops or mines for whatever infra you didn't whip.

But that means that whipping infra before that in hammer-poor cities is pretty important.

This...

I also whip Theatres and other happiness buildings in newly captured cities.

Globe Theatre is useful for whipping out military. +Drafting. Alternatively specialist farm.


EDIT: It can be annoying to settle new cities after you switch out of slavery.

 

[UncleJJ]

Yes, but my point is that you compare two cities size 6 while building units (well, the FE city size is variable but...), then magically one gains 5 pop asa the war is over . I guess what I wanna say is that there is a transition period between the two comparaisons, while farm city goes from size 6 to 11. While doing so, the output of the farm city is nearly 0 (well, 4 beakers/3 EPs size 7, 8 beakers/6 EPs size 8...). I think you should include it so it doesn't look magical . (and your welcome! I made 2 SGs inspired by one of your discussion...)

Ok, I see what you mean now. But that is not a real problem. Firstly I did a simple steady state analysis of the end conditions since a dynamic one is more trouble than it's worth and depends on starting conditions.

There is nothing magical and the growth phase lasts only a few turns when there is a high food surplus. The size of the farm city fluctuates between size 6 and size 9 most of the time and on average needs to run 2 specialists to soak up the excess food so it will be size 8 on average (for the post Biology, pre Kremlin case)

It will depend on when in the whipping drafting cycle the decision to switch to "wealth / EP mode" is made. But assuming it is at size 8 then the 2 specialists will both be producing 14 output anyway (9 EPs and 5 beakers) and that plus the 5 wealth means that it will equal the workshop building wealth case immediately. At size 8 there will be a food surplus of 7 and it takes 18 food to grow to size 9 (= 3 turns) and then the farms case is easily winning. At size 9 the food surplus of 5 takes 4 turns to grow to size 10 and then a further 7 turns to grow to size 11 with the 3 food surplus. That doesn't seem too long to me and the farms case will be ahead in terms of combined output the whole time, unless you chose the exact moment it was size 6 to switch modes.

Then if you want to revert back to the whipping drafting mode you now have a size 11 city that can immediately turn the excess 3 pop into a unit before going into the main whipping-drafting cycle. So nothing is really lost... it is better to think of pop as a store of hammers that can be cashed in when needed. In the meantime they produce losts of EPs and beakers.

 

[Iranon]

@ Grey Fox and the quotation from TMIT: Pre-guild workshops with CS vs. farms for whipping is a 1:1 trade-off between food and hammers. Whipping is more efficient until size 20 then (30 food to regrow from a 30-hammer whip)... so that's quite a bit off. They break even at size 10 after guillds; in both cases the size refers to the average during regrowth (e.g. they would break even at 12-to-9 whips after guilds, 22-to-19 before).

One could still realistically opt for CS and workshops while they are less efficient though: Unlimited specialist slots aside, workshops will allow you to channel your whole output into hammers. Since you will channel part of excess food into regrowth and the other part into food deficit tiles/specialists to avoid growing into unhappiness, being more efficient only means you'll have a mixed output you can't reach with workshops. You will not necessarily beat them in pure production if that's all you care about.

 

[mirthadir]

You seem to be mixing several things together that really aren't a problem.

Firstly, we need only consider cities that can be irrigated. I only build farms in those and workshops or cottages where irrigation is not possible. My workshops will be the same as yours except they lose 1 hammer from CS - a small price to pay given the few workshops I use and the relative rarity of such cities.

Your calculations on a per tile basis is leading you astray and your analysis is not giving correct outcomes. We need to do calculations at the level of a city since the whipping and drafting restrictions are affected by city size and only a limited number can be used in a given time period without incurring excessive unhappiness.

So let's take an example city and study it over a whipping-drafting cycle of 10 turns and then compare its output with a workshop alternative. The city I have chosen is distinctly unimpressive at first sight and many players would not even settle it. It only has access to 6 tiles, 3 grasslands and 3 plains with remaining tiles in the BFC either useless or belonging to other cities.

Early in the game (pre Biology / Communism) this city produces +5 food and up to 4 base hammers (5 with forge). Under Slavery and Nationhood it can be used to draft a musket and whip a cannon while putting spare hammers and overflow into a mace. Drafting at size 6 costs 15 food. A cannon with 5 hammers invested will be a 3 pop whip with significant overflow of 23 hammers which carries into the mace. If we assume a whip from size 7 to size 4 it costs 14, 15 and 16 food to regrow which takes 9 turns and there is some loss of hammers from the plains farms. So over a 12 turn cycle we whip a cannon and draft a musket and put hammers into mace. The mace will get 23 hammers and a varying amount depending on how many plains farms are worked that I can't be bothered to analyse in detail.

Without SP to boost food there is no need to do a workshop analysis for the city at this stage.

Later when we have Biology and Communism the same city gets a huge boost of another 6 food and the 10% from SP. We'll assume Kremlin has not been built, initially. With +11 food the city can support the drafting of a rifleman and 3 pop whipping of a cannon on a 10 turn cycle and the excess food is used used to run spy specialists. The intelligence agency and jail have been added to the city to provide slots and EP %bonus. Let's analyse the food usage:

Spoiler :

Food income 110 food over 10 turns
Draft at size 8 = 17 food
3 pop Whip from size 9 to 6 requires 16, 17, 18 = 51 food
42 Spare food used to feed specialists for 22 specialist turns

The 22 specialist turns will each give 9 EPs and 5 beakers (with Rep and a Library) for 198 Eps and 110 beakers. A 3 pop whip with forge and SP will give 121 hammers and the plains farms will now be worked all the time giving another 50 hammers. So a cannon and a mace (or equivalent) are produced in 10 turns as well as a draft rifle (worth 110 hammers).

Let's see what an identical workshop city can produce at this time. The grasslands can be turned to workshops and 2 plains but 1 plains stays as a farm to give an overall +1 food. The total hammer output would be 12 + 1 + 1 + 10 = 24 and the forge and SP bonus would give 32 output hammers. Assuming you are running Nationhood the +1 food allows a rifleman draft every 16 turns = 6.8 hammers/ turn or 68 averaged over the 10 turns.

So comparing the two cities we get:

Workshop: 320 hammers + 68 draft hammers = 388 hammers
Slavery: 121 + 50 + 110 = 281 hammers + 198 EPs + 110 beakers.
Running an engineer instead of a spy for 10 turns would add 30 hammers for loss of 90 EPs and 13 beakers.

Now let's add Kremlin into the picture and with Assembly Line and Artillery increase the hammer cost of the troops. The workshop city might build a factory and coal plant but so could the Slavery city. For the sake of the comparison we will assume either they both do or neither do and the production bonus essentially cancels. The same can be argued for the use of PS, which is usually adopted for WW reasons rather than the production bonus.

The food analysis for the farmed city becomes:

Spoiler :

Draft infantry at size 8 costs 16 + 17 = 33 food
3 pop whip from size 9 to 6 requires 16, 17, 18 = 51 food
26 spare food used to feed specialists for 13 turns.

A 3 pop whip with Kremlin will give 135 base hammers and with forge and SP this becomes 182.

The workshop case is now the same as before, except the draft of an infantry is more difficult due to the low food surplus and the need to lose a plains workshop if a draft from size 7 is done. The city will need 15 food to regrow which with a mere 2 food surplus could take 8 turns. Is a draft infantry worth the disruption and loss of workshop hammers? I'll assume it is not for now. The +1 food is therefore used to run an engineer specialist 33% of the time = 1 hammer on average.

So comparing the two cities again we get:

Workshop: 320 hammers + 10 from part time engineer = 330
Slavery: 182 + 50 + 140 = 372 hammers, plus 117 EPs and 65 beakers.

In peacetime the two cities can be run to produce wealth and EPs etc. instead of hammers and units.

The farms will now provide enough food to run an average of 5.5 spies, thats an alteration of 5 spies with +1 food and 6 with -1 food and the pop being whipped or drafted away periodically. At size 11 the city can support 5 spies giving 45 EPs and 25 beakers per turn and build 5 wealth for a total of 75 output.

The workshop city can build 33 wealth. The farms / specialists are more than twice as good. The workshops would almost certainly build the factory and coal plant in this situation (costs 450 hammers) and then the wealth will increase by 18 to 51 so it still loses out heavilly even after a lot of extra investment.

I was going to add an analysis of a simple coastal city with a single clam and 11 coastal tiles and no other useful tiles (ice or tundra perhaps). But suffice it to say that whipping a battleship every 10 turns or so (Kremlin, Drydock, forge and SP) should impress you enough to realise that the CS/SP civic combination does this little gem no favours. Between battleships it can either draft or run a few spy specialists making a flexible use of its limited 5 food surplus.

Overall, as long as your game is orientated towards the effective combination of espionage and warfare then the combination of Slavery, Nationhood, SP with Kremlin and spy specialists beats workshops with SP/CS by a considerable margin. This happens over a long period of time during the critical transition from the pre Biology period when cannons and muskets are the best available troops through to the late game when whipping tanks and other large value items just makes the Kremlin more efficient. It's more flexible, you get a bigger army quicker and have lots of espionage to ensure you know what the AI is doing or to steal techs or disrupt civics and religions. And finally many more of your cities can have useful production both for their own infrastructure and extra units, flat land for workshops is not needed so many more city sites are useful.

Firstly it is dishonest to consider only the irragable land. This is a question of an empire wide civic, not of what is best merely for one city. For a small empire, a substantial factor I've been overlooking are WSs in major core cities, most notably the HE and the IW city; which are not going to be at 10 pop. Due to the multipliers, WSs here are of greater concern. Likewise, on an empire wide basis we need to see how many irrigable tiles we have so as to optimize the empire in total. The question of Caste vs Slavery must take into account the total empire effects; and as an added bonus I might add that no civ has slavery as favored civic whereas caste system is and can be used to push an AI to friendly (thus allowing otherwise impossible tech trades) and getting a massive boost to research rate.

This is a decision with empire wide effects and hence any level of optimization below the level of the entire empire is a priori invalid. City considerations are either facile or far too complicated to model. For instance, in your example you state that draft an infantry an infantry is not worth the cost due to the 2 food surplus regrowth time, however if we were to borrow a high food tile (farmed FP, food resource, or even a bio grassland farm) we would increase our regrow rates to 5 turns which would then us shift the farm back to another city which could then grow for 5 turns. For the rifleman draft this results in a trebling of the draft efficiency. Which is of course the point, if you are in a position to draft you can alter the food balance. For the price of 4 worker-turns per cycle I can actually flip a farm/WS outright which suddenly gives the WSs city over 450 per 10 turns. By giving the whip city a highly maximized food cycle while the WS city just assumes a moronic draft cycle is frankly disingenious. Flipping out a WS or two for the duration of the draft era (normally assumed to be over once you either opt for blitz warfare along the tank/air/paratroop/MArty lines or when other concerns for you out of nat) still gives superior raw production with Caste and WS/farms than using Slavery with farms/specs.

Of course you are making the assumption that we are not utilizing PS, indeed that we are free to run rep.

I am well aware of the value of whipping for food surplus small cities; I do it myself all the damn time. I am more pointing out that alternatives, such as CE with US, HE with WS, etc. are by no means not competitive and that the optimum mix will come to down to empire wide concerns. For a simple point of comparison the popular riverside, former jungle IW city receives no benefit from slavery, but may have 10-20 tiles which each receive an additional 3 (though perhaps as high as 4.6) from caste. This will override the concerns of 2-5 of your filler cities; likewise the HE city and any other core production cities may also push you over toward greater benefit from Caste than slavery. Once we look into other options, like whole islands lacking fresh water, a high food WS/NE city, etc. we end up with many map considerations that dictate going caste.

Virtually all the claims of vast superiority from slaving over caste here rest upon the laurals of other concerns: rep specs with libs, all land assumed to be irrigatable, and the most ass backwards tile assignments in a draft cycle I've ever seen.

 

[Afro Dictator]

i dont whip much .

personal preference i love my people

i do whip captured cities though

 

[Th3 PuNiSh3R]

Whip quite frequently as you expand and set up infrastructure. After civilization wide stabilization sets in and you find yourself in a more permanent circumstance you need to re assess and make the correct choice.

 

[BiggerJim]

So does a whip heavy stategy require you to have religion in some form to handle the unhappiness?

Ideally you'll have religion of course, but I was recently not able to get it early enough and had unhappinees become a significant problem...

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Hi,

Not specially a religion, but as always, you want as many happiness as you can get.
Slavery goes well with Heridatery Rule (Monarchy), as you can whip a big unit for several population points, and put the overflow into one small (warrior, chariot) that stays in the city to compensate the unhappiness from the whip. But you have a lot of other ways: religion as you said, drama (culture slider and theaters), calendar for the earliest.For mid game or late game whipping, you want to use them all as your cities are bigger (HR+ culture slider + happy resources+ religion), and have the multiplier buildings.(forge/theater/market/coliseum)

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

edit: to have a religion early, make sure you have the requirements to enable trade routes between you and the founder civ. You do not need to have Open Borders with them though. Having a coastal city or one on a river helps. Opening borders with the founder can too if he is the kind of AI who send missionaries (Mansa, saladin, isabella, Hatty...)
Or found one