Hammer Overflow

Let me ask you this:

Since the maximum overflow is equal to the number of hammers it takes to build something, if you built some big thing that gave a large overflow (say 200 hammers), and then you built something small that cost only like 20 hammers, would that 180 left over get converted to gold (on top of everything else)?

If so, it seems like a good way to get gold regularly would be to alternate between building expensive things and cheap things.
 
The maximum overflow is the GREATER of
Hammers produced per turn
and
Cost of the last item

so unless you chop/whip, the only way to get overflow gold is to build things that cost less than your total hammer production and to do so repeatedly (explorers for example)

and the only ways that it is better than building Wealth is
1. it doesn't require Currency
2. it can use other modifiers
so
Resource/Trait bonuses/OR for buildings
Heroic Epic/Military Academy/Police State/Drydocks for units
 
Vale, any chance of you starting off your article with an introduction as well as a practical step-for-step example, so as to ease first-time readers like myself into what you're doing and why...? :)
 
I think it worth mentioning that you can benefit from conversion of overflow hammers to gold in Vanilla CIV 1.74 if you install the HoF mod.

The only difference is when comparing the hammer to gold conversion rate with Wealth as in Vanilla Wealth uses the 1/2*gold multipliers not 1/2*production multipliers.
 
I suppose this could do even more good for production-centric UB's. Assembly Plant, Shale Plant, and the Dike suddenly have increased worth.
 
Neato said:
I suppose this could do even more good for production-centric UB's. Assembly Plant, Shale Plant, and the Dike suddenly have increased worth.
Click to expand...

Hey, now I have a reason to play as Germany! :mischief:

Wonderful article, Vale.
 
kazapp said:
Vale, any chance of you starting off your article with an introduction as well as a practical step-for-step example, so as to ease first-time readers like myself into what you're doing and why...? :)
Click to expand...
Sorry for the very belated reply.

I've provided a link to an in game example in one of the ALC threads in the second part of the article. That should give a decent idea of what is being done in terms of gameplay and the large influx of gold is the reason for doing it.

Also simultaneously, that display verified to me that this is still present in BTS 3.13 so that is one thing off my to do list.
 
Very advance stuff here. =)
 
OK, this is a damn geeky question but ...

anyone got any thoughts on how this can be accounted for in a narrative/'ethical' sense?

i.e. how could we phrase and account for a decision to turn hammers into gold in the terms of an historical / contemporary practice or event?

rubbish i know ... but i play civ because im a megalomaniac who wishes he ran a nation state and therefore like to keep it all 'fair' enough for me to suspend my disbelief and think it could all be real ;) !!!
 
That's a fair question, actually. There are a lot of things about this game that people take only at face value, and never consider anything beyond that. I mean, there's a monster-thread about civ-physics or something like that.

In this game, gold (as in the currency of the game) doesn't represent just money - you can't say 1 gold = $1 million or something like that - but rather represents an amount of labor that was used to produce things. Some of these things might be whole units, or they might be spare parts, or pre-fab pieces, or whatever. A city producing gold can help a city producing a Wonder, if you're using US, by helping you to buy the last of the production.

It's not that you literally bought it, it's that the gold represents stockpiled resources and parts and labor. There's kind of a handwave that assumes your people knew which parts would be needed slightly before you did, AND that nothing goes to waste, but that's mostly for keeping people from crying about wasted hammers and such. Previous editions of Civ did a lousy job of handling overflow.

Okay, so with all that out of the way, what about the hammer-to-gold overflow from building GMs in your Ironworks/HE/MA/Forge/Factory/Shale Plant/PS/SP city that gives +395% military unit production on 80 base hammers, plus a chop?

In this case, you're just going to have to accept the 1-thing-per-turn-per-city limit as the implementation of fairness that it is and pretend that all that gold is spare parts for whatever you need later. If all those hammers disappeared, I think you'd hear a bunch of crying on the forums about it.

I realize this isn't the strongest possible argument, but I never promised I had such for you.:crazyeye:
 
It's a plenty fine argument. A simpler one is that they used all those trees to print money, which is why inflation gets so bad in this game...stupid protective civs ;).

It's far more "real" than any animal killing a trained military force or primitive (or even regular) guns firing through stone walls as if they *literally* weren't there :p.

As for the thread on the "physics of combat in Civ IV", if that's what TheDS was referring to, it is actually a joke thread. You realize this about the time of...the OP, where he starts talking about axe vs sword mojo depending on the gravitational pull of a city, trance states and 100 meter spears, and siege explosions as punishment for missing ;). Of course there's even a reference to spear beats tank, and it's done pretty well IMO haha.
 
Yes, I know the intent of the OP of that thread was a joke, but there are people (such as yourself) who constantly harp and harp and harp about their little pet peeve - the walls and the animals in your case - and anyone who can't let go of something so trivial, who brings it up in almost every post, probably looks at it as more than a quirk.

Don't think I'm trying to pick on you, you're just a handy example. I see people just about crying about how they hate something, how unrealistic something is, all the time, when all they had to do was think of it in the proper terms.
 
I'm not one to take offense easily, and I even see how I'm a good example...sometimes I like to !@#$* too much :p. In reality I just turn things off if I don't feel like dealing with them.

Too bad you can't turn off protective sucking for humans :p. It's such a great AI trait though. The ability to chop/whip out overflow like this for gold is very useful to an otherwise weak trait, although I kind of like certain other abusive things like early archer camplocking an AI's expansion (to be used with care, but still) and powered up xbows (which I favor more than maces if I'm using trebs since the AI doesn't counter them pre-knights very well).

One thing I kind of complain about a lot, although wouldn't necessarily like to see changed, is one that guy joked about in his thread: that walls and castles disappear to gunpowder. Even muskets and rifles (the magicians know when to make them disappear). It seems like this nerfs protective unnecessarily, but at the same time, I'm not certain I'd be happy with that change since I'm very aggressive in my warmongering :p.

Edit: IMO there's a difference between complaining about tactics viable in the game vs game features that are annoying, also, as they stem from different fundamental outlooks to begin with, but the point stands regardless.
 
This is a very confusing article. I've read it twice now and still can't understand what's what. Let's just try to do something basic with it.

--- Example 1:

Build a Wall
No Production Modifiers
City is producing 1 hammer
Chop 20 Forests at 20 hammers a chop at the same time (adds 400 hammers)

Production Multiplier = 1
True Cost = 50 (Wall hammer cost)
Base Cost = 50 / 1 = 50
Hammers per Turn = 400 + 1 = 401
Excess Hammers = 401 - 50 = 351
Base Hammers = 351 / 1 = 351

So, Overflow Hammers is equal to 351 in this case?

More to follow....
 
Yxklyx said:
This is a very confusing article. I've read it twice now and still can't understand what's what. Let's just try to do something basic with it.

--- Example 1:

Build a Wall
No Production Modifiers
City is producing 1 hammer
Chop 20 Forests at 20 hammers a chop at the same time (adds 400 hammers)

Production Multiplier = 1
True Cost = 50 (Wall hammer cost)
Base Cost = 50 / 1 = 50
Hammers per Turn = 400 + 1 = 401
Excess Hammers = 401 - 50 = 351
Base Hammers = 351 / 1 = 351

So, Overflow Hammers is equal to 351 in this case?

More to follow....
Click to expand...

When say that your production multiplier is 1, I expect that you're probably looking at a production multiplier bonus of 1 (i.e. 100%). That means you're getting +100% on any hammers you put into the walls. (If you really did mean that you have a production multiplier of 1, then your numbers are correct.)

Assuming you meant a production bonus of 100%, then you're going to get 401 hammers of production +100% for a total of 802 hammers.
...now, only 50 hammers are used, so you have 752 hammers of overflow (when you count the +100%).

Because the Walls cost 50 hammers, you will end up with 702 gold and 50 "real" hammers on your next turn.

Did this help at all? The original article goes into better detail, but I think your primary problem understanding the article comes from the fact that you start with 100% production and then have to consider any production bonuses on top of that 100%. I might also have gotten this wrong, so a double check on my thoughts from another poster who uses this tactic would be appreciated.

Edit: You can also generate gold from a failed World/National Wonder. If you think that the AI will build Chitzen Itza for some reason, then you might consider building it yourself if you have Stone/Industrious/Both so that you will get a bunch of gold when you fail to complete it first. Also, if you want a National Wonder in one city, but you don't need it soon, you can consider building it in another city with access to the +100% production bonus resource and then canceling production so that you get a bundle of cash when it finally is built in that other city. Protective leaders with access to Stone will get a massive amount of cash from this in the early game if they can chop enough forests, however.
 
popejubal said:
When say that your production multiplier is 1, you're probably looking at a production multiplier bonus of 1 (i.e. 100%). That means you're getting +100% on any hammers you put into the walls.

That means you're going to get 401 hammers of production +100% for a total of 802 hammers.
...now, only 50 hammers are used, so you have 752 hammers of overflow (when you count the +100%).

If the next item in production also gets a 100% production bonus, then you'll still have 752 hammers of production next turn as well. If you don't, then you'll have only 376 hammers during that next turn (since you don't get the 100% bonus on the extra hammers).

Did this help at all? The original article goes into better detail, but I think your primary problem understanding the article comes from the fact that you start with 100% production and then have to consider any production bonuses on top of that 100%.
Click to expand...


No, the multiplier has to be at least 1 since you can't divide by 0. A multiplier of 1 means you're not getting a production bonus.

I think I figured it out. "Hammers per Turn" never includes Hammers from Whipping or Chopping. I think that's what is meant by the original definition. Can someone confirm?
 
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