GoTM2 and hurrying bug?

[Requies]

How do we deal with the hurrying bug in 1.52?

Relevant post

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[Shillen]

Why does this need to be dealt with? It's something Firaxis needs to fix in a patch, but it doesn't give you any advantage. It just means that pop rushing is weaker on slower speeds. Unless I'm misunderstanding the issue.

edit: After studying the table again I think I don't understand what the issue is. Clarification would be great.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

It is actually a horrible bug that will definitely impact some people's games, and I don't think there is anything that can be done for 4oTM 2 because so many have already finished.

To explain the bug in the shortest way I can, when you pop rush, sometimes you will get 30 hammers per person, sometimes you will get 60. And you can ensure you always get 60 by taking note of how many hammers are needed to complete the project.

What a brilliant patching job this was.

 

[AlanH]

Like Shillen, I read the thread and was still in need of a simple explanation of the issue, and so thanks, Bradley, for supplying it.

It doesn't look to me as though we can do anything about it for GOTMs. What would we say ... the Civequivalent of "Don't pop rush on alternate Thursdays when there's an 'R' in the month"?

Players will simply have to be aware of it, and presumably will then micro manage to make best use of it. Some day Firaxis may make it go away, but meanwhile it's part of the game for better or worse.

 

[solenoozerec]

Just in case I will remember to avoid pop rushing when 90 hummers are needed in 4OTM2 (hopefuly I will not need it anyway).

 

[Requies]

Why does this need to be dealt with? It's something Firaxis needs to fix in a patch, but it doesn't give you any advantage. It just means that pop rushing is weaker on slower speeds. Unless I'm misunderstanding the issue.

edit: After studying the table again I think I don't understand what the issue is. Clarification would be great.

The bug is that if you rush when you need 31-45 hammers, you will get 30 extra hammers than if you rushed for 1-30.

IOW, you would only lose 1 population at 31-45 hammers, but you would get 60 hammers (instead of the 45 you would expect) whereas if you rush from 1-30 you would get only 30 hammers.

You get an advantage in pop rushing over other players if they don't know about the cutoff point as they'll likely be rushing when they have 1-30 rather than 31-44. This is for stuff at base cost. For stuff with a discount, you would still get double, it's just that the amount would be different.

I'm not sure if the gold version of this bug is fixed, but that could also potentially affect the GoTM if it isn't completely fixed from 1.09 (i.e., gold rushing is CHEAPER in Epic games) since it takes the same amount of gold to rush in Epic and Normal games to hurry the production of the same item (therefore, suggesting people stock up on money and try to get the Pyramids with a quick jump to Universal Suffrage).

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[DaviddesJ]

It is actually a horrible bug ....

What a brilliant patching job this was.

This seems a bit of an exaggeration. You get 60 hammers when you should get 45. This is a much smaller problem than those we had in 1.09.

Most people (I think) are going to tend to rush production at the earliest time, anyway, i.e., they are going to be in the case of needing 44 hammers (and collecting 60).

People who are expending 1 pop to rush a production with only 1 hammer left on it are clearly attempting some sort of micro-management anyway; I don't have too much sympathy if they aren't paying enough attention to notice what the results are.

The fact that the breakpoints for pop rush cost are 44, 89, 134, ..., rather than 45, 90, 135, ..., is odd, but is well known and is mentioned in all of the relevant threads.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

This seems a bit of an exaggeration...Most people (I think) are going to tend to rush production at the earliest time, anyway, i.e., they are going to be in the case of needing 44 hammers (and collecting 60).

The latter point in the quote above didn't occur to me. That should be the case for a player that is doing a lot of pop rushing. If it isn't, then honing their micromanagement skills would be a more important issue than the bug.

As for my "exaggeration", I suppose is was. I wasn't very happy when I found out about the bug, and I wrote my post shortly after. Therefore the presence of the rather strong adjective "horrible."

You get 60 hammers when you should get 45.

That is true, of course, but some people might find it a little misleading. I think it is more relevant to say "You get 60 hammers or you get 30."

In any case, players should definitely keep in mind the breakpoints if they are concerned about losing hammers.

I am actually not sure about one thing myself: how do production bonuses factor in (ie: stone when building pyramids, org. religion for buildings, etc.)? Do they change the breakpoints, or only the amount of hammers you recieve?

 

[DaviddesJ]

I am actually not sure about one thing myself: how do production bonuses factor in (ie: stone when building pyramids, org. religion for buildings, etc.)? Do they change the breakpoints, or only the amount of hammers you recieve?

They should have the effect of simply multiplying the number of hammers. I.e., you should be able to take the number of hammers remaining to finish the production, divide by the production bonus, look that number of hammers up in DaveMcW's chart, which will then tell you the pop rush cost, and give a number of hammers received, which you should then multiply by the production bonus to get the actual number of hammers received. (And then, of course, on the following turn you'll have to divide the excess hammers by the production bonus, again, to compute the production overflow.)

E.g., you're building Pyramids with Stone (+100%). You have 82 hammers to go. Divide 82/2 = 41. So you can pop rush for a cost of 1 pop, and you will get 60*2 = 120 hammers. Let's say your city adds another 24 hammers during production (12 hammers on tiles worked, +100% for Stone). This gives an excess of 120+24-82 = 62. Divide 62/2 = 31; you should have 31 hammers next turn toward your next production task.

Note that this is exactly 15 more than if the bug weren't present. So a simpler way of saying it is that the bug just gives you 15 extra overflow hammers, on the next turn.

(I haven't checked this exact case. If someone does, and the results are different, please post!)

 

[Amao]

Like Shillen, I read the thread and was still in need of a simple explanation of the issue, and so thanks, Bradley, for supplying it.

It doesn't look to me as though we can do anything about it for GOTMs. What would we say ... the Civequivalent of "Don't pop rush on alternate Thursdays when there's an 'R' in the month"?

Players will simply have to be aware of it, and presumably will then micro manage to make best use of it. Some day Firaxis may make it go away, but meanwhile it's part of the game for better or worse.

I rushed a lot in my subbmited game. And I didn't even notice this.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

Most people (I think) are going to tend to rush production at the earliest time, anyway, i.e., they are going to be in the case of needing 44 hammers (and collecting 60).

I have been thinking about this a bit more, and I don't think it is correct. It assumes that the first thing someone pop rushed would be something expensive, like a building or wonder. But it is quite likely that the first thing they rush would be a military unit. If they rushed an axeman, for instance, in a city generating 5 hammers, they would get 30 for the rush. Then, if they didn't know about the bug, they could assume that 30 hammers was the norm and end up pop rushing many archers or axemen--and lose out on a great many hammers. The same could happen if they went for a sword/cat rush after forges or org. rel. It is quite likely that this could happen to anyone going for an early military push. So some people's performance in 4oTM 2 may indeed take a big hit from this bug.

 

[DaviddesJ]

If they rushed an axeman, for instance, in a city generating 5 hammers, they would get 30 for the rush.

I don't understand how you figured this. Usually you would rush a unit as soon as you are able---you're rushing because you want it as soon as possible. If you start building an axeman and after the first turn it's at 5/43, then you can rush it right away (for 1 pop---the cost is never going to be less than that) and you do get +60 hammers.

But I don't want to argue about whether there is an effect. Obviously, it's an advantage to know how the game works, rather than not knowing. And, if people aren't paying close attention to the results of their choices, it's not surprising when they get suboptimal results.

To me, it's most surprising that no one else noticed this.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

I don't understand how you figured this

Ooops. I mixed epic bug values with normal production values. That's what I get for thinking about civ while in bed and only half awake.

I used a poor example, but my point is valid. I should have used an archer or warrior as an example instead of an axman. If someone chooses an archer as the first item they pop rush, they will get 30 hammers, not 60.

If it is the players first time playing epic or with the 1.52 patch—which I suspect will be common for this game—they would have no reason to suspect that 30 hammers is not normal. After that, they could pop rush a whole variety of different buildings or units and never see anything but hammers = #pop x 30 . It wouldn’t matter if they were “paying close attention,” they simply would never see any evidence of the bug. And the bug could have had a very large impact on some player’s games as a result.

 

[jayeffaar]

You guys are all assuming that most players pay as much attention to those details as you do. I don't know how many other players are like me but after all the games I've played, I have never stopped to notice how many hammers per pop point I was getting when pop rushing. When I have something in the build queue that I'd like to have right away, I just hover over the Pop Rush button, see how many guys need to be sacrificed and decide whether I want to go for it or not. This is never something I plan ahead of time.

After reading this thread, I understand what the problem is, but this isn't something I would ever have noticed in a hundred games... or that would bug me now. I don't expect to ever be a competitive player...

 

[shumble]

I still don't understand this thread. I tried tonight to figure out what you mean by pop rushing. Do you mean when you are under the civic, Slavery, and you use population to rush a building? I tried to do it with the different number of hammers like you said, but it wanted two of my population if there were still a lot of hammers left to build, not just one. And I did not see anywhere that I could specify to just kill one of my population to get the associated hammers.

If you could clarify this for me, I would greatly appreciate it since I would like to see how to use this in my games.

 

[civ_steve]

You don't specify how many points of population you lose when you pop-rush; you say you want to pop-rush and the game will deduct the number of population points to complete the project (if you have enough). According to DaveMcW's chart (linked to by 'relevant post' in the first post of this thread), how many shields you have left to finish the current build determines how many points of population you lose and how many shields you gain.

At Epic speed, you can maximize your pop-rush by doing it when you have 31-44 shields left to build whatever it is you're building. You'll get 60 shields in exchange for 1 point of population. By looking at the chart you can see when you get more shields for your population, and when you get less, so you can choose to pop-rush to get the most shields by waiting until the remaining shields to complete falls within the best ranges (31-44 is best ratio).

 

[DaviddesJ]

At Epic speed, you can maximize your pop-rush by doing it when you have 31-44 shields left to build whatever it is you're building.

Note that this figure only applies if you have no bonuses or penalties for that production. If you have modifiers (50% penalty for national wonder, 100% penalty for world wonder, 100% bonus for matching resource, 50% bonus for Industrious trait, 25% bonus for Organized Religion civic, 100% bonus for leader-specific buildings, 25% bonus for Police State civic, etc.) then the figure may be different. (Note that, if you're building a world wonder with matching resource, then the 100% penalty and 100% bonus cancel each other out.)