Governor is bugged. I dragged in proof.

[TheMeInTeam]

I guess I've never officially reported this bug, just complained about it extensively elsewhere. The governor thinks we're in vanilla 1.0, and would suck even there. It ignores emphasis commands when building wealth/research now. Take a look:

First, we take a look at a city emphasizing commerce, building something normally:

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Looks fine to me. What happens when we build wealth, which supposedly wants to max gold?

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We move off the mine to work an unimproved tile that does nothing but eat a citizen slot? What? And before we get any "works as intended" ignorance here, let's see what happens if we just disable the governor before clicking wealth:

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More gold. Novel concept.

Alright, next situation. This time, we're telling the governor to EMPHASIZE HAMMERS. In theory, this would work hammer tiles, and when we're not building wealth, it seems to do it like it should:

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So, what happens when we build wealth while emphasizing those hammers?

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Again, what's up with this? I'll try to keep the forum family friendly here, but believe me it's taking a LOT of restraint. A lot. So what happens if the governor assigned tiles like it SHOULD assign them?

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TWO SLIDER NOTCHES there (if this difference is taken across all cities that are building wealth).

Now, I have heard that back in 'nilla building wealth used to actually go through gold commerce multipliers, so maybe this was slightly more passable then (not sure how that worked). Maybe, but I doubt it since we're seeing unimproved tiles chosen that are yielding absolutely nothing to the city, while other tiles are ignored.

Nevertheless, I don't care what happened in history, the governor is ACTIVELY SELECTING TILES TO OPPOSE WHAT YOU ARE SPECIFICALLY INSTRUCTING IT TO DO. But only when building wealth, research, and possibly culture. It is deliberately decreasing the raw output of the output you instruct it to prioritize.

This is a pretty material bug. It would be far superior if the game just ignored that we build wealth and act like we're making a normal building/unit, rather than forcing us to disable to governor to keep it from doing something that is indisputably idiotic.

 

[ori]

While I generally agree that the governor is not good - your examples do show one thing: the governor tries to grow to the happiness cap when building any of the processes - one can argue that doing so would in the long run increase the output of this city - so it is not necessarily a bad thing. If the governor does something similarly stupid when the happy cap is reached - your point is much stronger

That said: I have seen the governor do really suboptimal stuff even then - so I don't want to argue against your point - just noting that the changes it makes in your examples actually do do something and not just eat up a pop slot

 

[r_rolo1]

In the case of the hammer emphasis, the hammers @ hap cap will be the exact same as iwith current pop. There is no reason to grow the city if you explicitely told that you are to give emphasis on hammers and growing the city will not do that

I think that the issue here is that the governor assumes that a city with more pop will get always more of wealth.... and that is far from the truth.

 

[ori]

however you are telling it to build wealth for infinity - and the higher pop city might have a higher wealth output when you include the commerce it could get from working the coast...

 

[r_rolo1]

No... 1F 3H vs 1F 3C ( without any modifiers ). Unless you suppose Collosus and/or Feitoria... but then we can also suppose rails and tin events on the mines, or other stuff ad infinitum .... and governors are not paid on those stuff to think until we say otherwise

 

[ori]

no what I mean is this:
in the first screenshot 5 pop work 11 and 14 and 3
then wealth is put into the queue - now at 5 pop it could still do 11 and 14 and 3 and grow later or choose to grow as soon as possible and at the cap use 6 pop points to for 12 , 14 and 6 -> since is converted into at some rate this is a decision that could actually be beneficial.
Now it is not what the user expects to happen - hence it is not a good behavior
but it is not necessarily a bad choice from the perspective of generated wealth (of course in the given example it is since during these 4 turns prior to growth it loses 4*6 and the 7 turns it saves are not going to make up for this, so as a net investment the governor does play in a suboptimal way in this example - but there may be other examples where growing to the cap can be beneficial in overall production).
I do agree that the governor is too eager to grow when building processes - but there is a valid argument to be made that in general the overall production of the process is usually greater when it is build at the cap and that hurrying growth in these circumstances might warrant temporarily reducing the weight it gives to or

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No... 1F 3H vs 1F 3C ( without any modifiers ). Unless you suppose Collosus and/or Feitoria... but then we can also suppose rails and tin events on the mines, or other stuff ad infinitum .... and governors are not paid on those stuff to think until we say otherwise

Especially because it would STARVE it if used the unimproved food tile to grow, then switched to coast. There isn't enough food! If it was really gunning for commerce for some stupid reason, it would be working the coast NOW.

Admittedly, the governor does start changing its patterns a bit when you're near the cap, but it doesn't change the reality. I am, above all other things, emphasizing hammers, and there are some very, very good hammer tiles available right this instant, and the governor is not willing to work them.

Considering the slider position the commerce still can't match hammers (it's > 0%).

The governor works the appropriate tiles when building almost anything EXCEPT wealth or research, where it decides that it should morph into a spectacular moron and intentionally screw us or force us to triple our city micro if we want to build wealth ever. Considering the current system is clearly wrong in almost every instance for wealth, and that it was probably based on vanilla values, why can't it simply be patched to retain the same tile assignments as anything else? The player's choice of commerce, hammers, food, great people, science, and avoid growth all do a reasonable job of tile assignments already, so why override them?

 

[Balderstrom]

I think the issue is, the code doesn't check a comparision between present and future: will things improve with more population, instead of assuming it will always be better to grow to the happy cap.

Again, you should mention it in the BBAI, its possible its not that difficult of a fix, and would likely really improve the AI.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think the issue is, the code doesn't check a comparision between present and future: will things improve with more population, instead of assuming it will always be better to grow to the happy cap.

Again, you should mention it in the BBAI, its possible its not that difficult of a fix, and would likely really improve the AI.

The basic fix would be to set build wealth/research to do the same thing that building a unit does. That would already drastically improve this, as you can see above.

I tried posting a few suggestions over there, hopefully future posts in that thread are better than the first reply. I was told that working the two food tiles was superior to the hill mines for long term production because you can whip it rolleyes and that building wealth generates commerce rolleyes:).

 

[Balderstrom]

I was told that working the two food tiles was superior to the hill mines for long term production because you can whip it rolleyes and that building wealth generates commerce rolleyes:).

I agree with that on some level... but if you are using the Govenor - then you are likely reducing your level of city-wide micromanagement. Whipping requires micromanagement. Thus if you are using the Govenor - you will be unlikely to be whipping in Cities that you have turned the Govenor on.

Also if you aren't already in Slavery, and aren't one of the leaders that can change Civics with impunity - then changing to Slavery just to whip will cause you to lose 2-3 turns (or more depending on game speed) of production in every city of your Empire.

The Govenor should account for whether having another citizen will actually improve the cities preferred goals. Since once your city grows you will HAVE to work a food tile or start starving.

Thus there should be an inherent difference between the Govenor + Wealth, and the Govenor + Wealth + Food...

Frequently I will use the govenor just to get a quick tile-change and then micro-manage it to what I actually want... i.e a second-opinion or a base starting point. It is unfortunate that the auto-managed Govenor works so poorly. An improvement in this area would be a great boon to the AI - as I highly doubt the AI really can utilize whipping effectively as is.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I agree with that on some level.

What? Show me a case, even one, where working a 2f tile and later whipping leads to more hammers produced than working a grassland hill mine. Even for better food tiles (like a normal farm), you can't forget the hammers forgone in the interim in the comparison.

But with the 2f tile, I'm almost sure that the break-even point for working that over the grassland hill mine is *never*. AKA - that tile is completely inferior for hammers. Completely.

 

[Balderstrom]

*chuckle*

I agree with it - if you aren't building wealth, and have a building or unit in queue, and are either in slavery or have a Spiritual Leader: Then growing the city would be more effective than slower growth and more .

I believe you actually shouldn't be allowed to whip if you are building Wealth/Research/etc... if you can whip that - its foolish.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

*chuckle*

I agree with it - if you aren't building wealth, and have a building or unit in queue, and are either in slavery or have a Spiritual Leader: Then growing the city would be more effective than slower growth and more .

I believe you actually shouldn't be allowed to whip if you are building Wealth/Research/etc... if you can whip that - its foolish.

You can't whip into wealth.

Edit, actually after reading this more carefully:

if you aren't building wealth, and have a building or unit in queue, and are either in slavery or have a Spiritual Leader: Then growing the city would be more effective than slower growth and more .

This is wrong. The whip can do a lot of things for you, but you still have to understand how it works. If you think growing using a 2f tile instead of working a 1f 3h mine yields more total hammers, you definitely do not understand.

 

[Balderstrom]

Ok, well then the only instance that I agree with the BBAI response mentioned earlier is in the case here:

have a building or unit in queue, and are either in slavery or have a Spiritual Leader: Then growing the city would be more effective than slower growth and more .

Which is also what I implied & meant in my post previously, where I stated I agree with it on some level - but where I went on to state all the places/factors that counter that agreement...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Ok, well then the only instance that I agree with the BBAI response mentioned earlier is in the case here:


Which is also what I implied & meant in my post previously, where I stated I agree with it on some level - but where I went on to state all the places/factors that counter that agreement...

It doesn't matter. The whip is less efficient even if you are in slavery/SPI, even if you have a unit in queue. The whip is not a magic hammer generation machine. It costs pop, and growing pop costs food (not to mention temporary ). It is literally impossible to ever come out ahead working a 2f tile over 1f 3h using the whip, if the goal is production. You can't do it, even in the situation you stated.

 

[Balderstrom]

I dont want to get into semantics... but if growing a pop only allows(and-requires) you to work one more 2F tile - then whipping that POP away is pretty much magic hammer generation.

And I suggested you bring it up to the BBAI team, because I basically agree with you - the govenor sucks. You are being argumentative for no reason I can fathom. Since there are many instances where whipping is more beneficial than not. If Better BTS AI could take those elements into consideration when/if reworking something like this - then it would be better.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I dont want to get into semantics... but if growing a pop only allows(and-requires) you to work one more 2F tile - then whipping that POP away is pretty much magic hammer generation.

No, it isn't and this is an important point because the governor seems to believe this when building wealth too.

Any time spent growing to a higher pop count is time spent not working the mine. For the turns you were working that 2f tile just to grow, you could have already generated more hammers just by working the mine. In this case, not only does the mine get you more hammers, it gets you more hammers faster.

Ironically, the OTHER governor (the one that dictates building choices) is actually pretty efficient with the whip, and when not building wealth its output on looped units is quite good. It will even switch to high food yield tiles when you have access to slavery, and to hammer tiles if you don't, to max hammer output.

And it never works unimproved tiles like this when there are better alternatives.

 

[Balderstrom]

In your specific situation above, that is correct. Whipping is not magical hammer generation -due to the fact that you have access to a 4 mine - but when you are limited to 3 tiles for choices - a whip will get you 30 instantly, in what would take you 10 turns (Epic speed I believe, is what I normally play - though its been a while since I've run a civ game).
And if you dont have the proper food resources available to support a new pop and more hammers - then whipping is generally preferred --- unless you DO have adequate food resources - then it becomes highly questionable to continue whipping at HIGH population points.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You have to grow big enough to whip before you whip. You weren't working hammers then.

Whipping grass mines is always inefficient below the cap. Always. Even with a granary. The food:hammer conversion from the whip isn't enough to make it worthwhile to remove that pop.

You're ignoring relevant factors when considering the difference between whipping and standard hammers, and it's causing you to come to the wrong conclusion.