Hippy economy

[MAvL]

The civics contain obvious synergies leading to main strategies of tile developpement and the main ones have been theorized. However, I'm surprised to see windmill+environmentalism (Hippy econ) has not and that environnementalism has such a bad press. I don't claim it is the best, it might be the worst econ civics, but it is definitely not without merit, and because they are not praised often enough, I'll only talk about the merit here.

Reference :

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/crazy-economy-vs-silly-economy.309988/

CE/SE economy, or their refinement FEUSS cottage and PARCS specialists.
You will obviously run some specialist in FEUSS cottage and may build some cottages in PARCS, but you have to plan long lasting choices in advance to maximise the power of your economy under a given set of civics.

Neither FEUSS nor PARCS assume an econ civics, so the issue at stake is perpendicular, though mercantilism has natural synergy with PARCS. People seem to choose between Free Market and State Property depending on the size of their empire and their preference about corporations. It's worth mentioning that SP watermill does involve some improvement planning (though lack of forethought is more forgiving than with cottages), just like SPCS workshops.


Without further ado, let us define Hippy Economy. It is an economy is centered around only one civic, Environnementalism, so it can complement FEUSS or PARCS. It is food intensive, so it can work as a transition out of CS in a PARCS for example. It goes a little further than just running the environnement civic (or it would not need a name) :

1. A couple of forest tiles (preferably on flatland) are preserved in each city
2. Windmills are favored over mines
3. A plan to have excess happiness by the industrial era is formulated.
4. A plan to leverage an early adoption of environnementalism

1/ Saving the forest
Achieving 1 is rather easy, provided you start with forest. Just don't chop everythin. Except severe city stacking, you should have enough workable tiles so that the only drawback is the lack of hammer right now. On the plus side :

• You get a health boost through all the game
  Spoiler :

  "One other bonus coming from a city's site is the +0.5 from each forest in the city's big fat cross. This bonus is rounded down, so in general it is best to keep even numbers of forest tiles in a city." https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Health_(Civ4)#Computing_the_health_limit
• You got more forest regrowing early on than by chopping everything ASAP.
  Spoiler :

  And potentially regrowing when you already have mathematics.
  This is a lot more relevant on Marathon.
  Forest spread orthogonally, road slows the spreading, improvements stop it
  Forest spread much faster on ancient era, the spread boost of forest preserve is mostly irrelevant for many reason : it has an hard time making up for slower growth due to era, things go faster, 30 are less relevant, there are much less tiles to spread (BFC tiles that are not improved).
  
  
  
• By the time you finally have the pop to be unable to work better than a forest, you can Lumber mill it. Lumbermills are basically mines you can put on flatland. A good workshop ersatz when you do not run SP or CS.
  Spoiler :

  lumbermill + forest is +2, the same as a mine, and both benefit from railroad.
  Lumber mill needs a saved forest but can be placed on flat.
  So while not as good as SP watermill, SPCS workshop or FEUSS towns, it is definitely on par with the default mines and farm, which are workable, though it does produce less excess food than farms or windmills.
  Because of the extra windmill , you should strongly favor windmills-lumbermill(flat) over lumbermill(hill)-farms, although on plain, you may be forced into some farms. All the better with Environnementalism.
  
• You can use your excess worker to switch between lumber and preserve, to handle happiness. Running Environnementalism, the tile is slightly less useless, but if you're walking on the edge, an extra specialist is better than nothing. And a worked preserve + a specialist or 2 specialists might be better than just a lumber mill and an unhappy face.
  
• If you really want to chop everything, do know that some consider it a viable strategy to save some forest for spaceship parts. In the mean time, you know what to do with it now.

It may be worth mentionnig that K-mod does revamp global warming in a realistic way, so that's another plus if you run this mod.

2/ Windmills
Favoring windmill over mines when they become available, and make them available ASAP.
11 instead of 2 is a really bad deal and it's ok to build mines even quite late and switching when windmills become better with replaceable part, environnementalism and electricity.
However, if you plan to run slavery up until windmill boosting tech, that 1 can be converted almost into 2, leaving you with an extra . Running food heavy strat is a common theme in Hippy econ, so extensive use of slavery beforehand makes sense (not farm spam food heaviest, but food heavy under constraints).

Slaver hippy? I prefer the words "population control", the planet is overcrowded, whipping people is a lesser evil.

Replaceable parts keeps the pace with railroaded mines (and comes much earlier and doesn't need worker time), electricity partially compensates slavery obselescence and environementlism boost them into very decent improvements.

Tiny bonus, windmill tiles will always fully benefit from golden ages ! (I think it's one of the reasons why Attacko advocates for grassland hill cotttages) Non riverside mines won't.

3/ Happiness
So to run slavery deep into the renaissance, you'll need some and , which is good since you will soon use them along environementalism's to baby boom. Running more farms and less cottages and no workshop, as well as running windmills are good ways to increase production.

If slavery is already obselete (big, productive cities) and environnementalism is not yet on the table, drafting is a good way to consume both and , is a good way to consume .

is usually not an issue, though if you have no other more pressing matter, you should definitely get the infrastructure built while waiting for the industrial revolution (one of the rare occasion I would build , usually theater, before it is absolutely needed). Nationhood, Hereditary Rules or Representation may help but should generally not be chosen solely for the boost.


4/ leveraging environmentalism

A lot of people quickely discard environnementalism, I think it is due to the absence of direct benefit. But if 6 sound unimpressive, the consequences can be huge.

In industrial era, must have buildings like forge, factories, and powerplant generate a total of 6, 2 less with cleaner and more expensive powerplants, much more if you include things like Ironworks, industrial park, airport, drydock...

Obviously, factories, even with full penality, are overall a big bonus, so, you should prioritize Industrialization (sometimes Industrialisation too, for tanks) over Medicine. But once it's out of the way, trading/teching medicine right ASAP can be a good move (even if only for hospital).

+6 means between +2 (specialists) and +6 (citizen working food neutral tiles) max populations. Usually closer to +6 citizen. You should have no problem growing most your cities to 20+.

Spoiler :

assuming granary, harbor and grocer and fresh water, it's about 22 top. Under Environmentalism, industrial towns otherwise growing effortlessy to 14 and struggling past that can grow effortlessly to 21, and can more easily built extra polluting infra.

So environementalism allows a much fastter and bigger growth, for less infrastructure. Is that really worth the saccrifice?

Sure, you can achieve +5 with aquaduc and hospital instead, assuming they're not already built but granary/harbor/grocer already are, but that is 300. For that price, you could built a panzer and machine gun. Or two bombers, or 2 infantrymen.

Environemetalism is +6 for free.

And that's often not enough, /wo environnementalism, 7 is 450. Food corps, while good in absolute are not that effective early on and requires significantly more time and effort (a great merchant, some techs, some ressources).

Environnementalism is +10 for 150

So environmentalism can save about 300 of infrastructure per city in exchange of not running something else.

Or you can grow smaller cities. What are more citizen worth?

1. Having core cities much bigger much faster will make your eco much stronger.
2. More pop means more votes to the UN

On point 1 :

Spoiler :

On a sunny day an extra trade route is +10pt. Sure, it's super cool on small useless towns, but otherwise, 2 exra specialists are probably better. And a boosted windmill and a lumbermill, magnified by bank, factory n co, are definitely better. And that is not even Env's sunny day (that's +6 citizens). Sure if you have crappy stacked cities or lot of 1 tile island cities (not ideal), free market can be better, but that's the exception not the norm. And more pop also means better trade routes.

I won't even compare with mercantilism.

State Property is trickier to compare with, but when relevant, it's probably competitive with enviironmentalism.

If you can suffer/skip the anarchy, putting yourself in environnementalism right after building most factories/coal plant and baby booming with it while building infrastructure and possibly late game tech (eg. refrigeration), to switch back to your favorite civic quickely thereafter, might even be an option.

It's not what Hippy eco is about though.

Hippy eco involves staying in Environnementalism possibly indefinitely, or at least until genetics, wide spreadth of corporation and such naturaly makes it obselete.

Now I reckong the advantages are not long lasting,

so one idea is to wage war ASAP after assembly line factories and environnementalism are in the pocket. The extra gold from FM won't help your opponent much in war, extra hammer from extra pop will help you. The extra food from SP watermill is null if unhealthy and again, gold saved on maintenance is not spent efficinetly on military.

Space races can also be won by only a few turns, I haven't tried it but that 300 saved in infrastructure could also be spent on laboratories and spaceship parts.


Of course, many games are already decided by the early industrial era, and it may be wacky to aim at environmentalism in the first place, but

• if you are still on your back foot in renaissance (even better if you have bee forced into a economy, because that will be useable on the war effort)
  
• if you have decent, spaced out cities
• if you have a good number of riverside towns you're reluctant to turn int SP watermills

Maybe you should give environmentlalism a shot, followed by tank war (domination or score) or UN victory or sometimes space victory.

 

[MAvL]

On a loosely related note, I think a good buff of environmentalism would be for it to transform excess into . Even at a ratte 2 for 1, even reducing the +6 bonus. It would entice nation running it into actually care about . Currently it has the the opposite effect (as noted by somebody else somewhere else in the forum).

 

[Fippy]

You should really change the thread title, it's quiet tasteless..there's nothing funny about this mass murderer.

I liked reading your post thou, but would point out that SP is so good that Enviro has only rare outside use.
Very difficult arguing against SP workshops & watermills, what you gain in health will be lost in food..bad trade.

 

[MAvL]

You should really change the thread title, it's quiet tasteless..there's nothing funny about this mass murderer.

done

but would point out that SP is so good that Enviro has only rare outside use.
Very difficult arguing against SP workshops & watermills, what you gain in health will be lost in food..bad trade.

Probably true. If it were only for the food, I think environment might still be viable as a temporary state (assuming SPI/CR) in maps with relatively few rivers, because it still takes 6 watermill / workshop to match environmentalism growth boost for the last few citizen, as any tile not SP boosted is better worked healthy than not. But it's true the difference is small (possibly even in the advantage of SP if #watermill > unhealthiness in sufficiently many cities at a time) compared to SP big maintenance savings.

Also watermill and workshop are not strictly better than other improvement. Lumber is on par with SP no CS workshop for example.The great thing about both WM and WS is that they pump hammer out of bare flatland, and hammer is often the best thing to produce.The great thing about watermill is that you need less farms, which I think are subpar.IMO WS is not as relevant as WM to switch to SP.

But I can conceive cases where you needed to overextend very early and needed to build riverside cottage to avoid bankrupt. By the time SP watermills look juicy, you're already running 227 riverside FEUSS towns (assuming levee), it compares with 3 3 3 watermills. Now that I look at it, it's definitely tempting to raze the towns, but my 1st instincts writing this post was no way, and if you say no, it's as if you had next to no riverside to work with and SP is much less attractive.

I don't know, do you often build watermill on top of fully grown towns?


I guess one could also be low on workers as a pretext to use envionmentalism a bit longer while the riverside is transformed into watermill.

I guess if the targeted civic is FM because of coprorations, environmentalism might be viable much longer too (I have no idea how good corp really are though, they really seem bad compared to SP, I never spammed them).

 

[Gumbolt]

Yes with state property watermills provide better overall total yields than towns. The additional +1 food can really help late game when health is a big issue. So 2H, 2C and +1 food. Vs +5 commerce from a town and printing press? Late game you are often running wealth and using factories/hydro dams for 50% hammer bonus. So 2 hammers converts to 3 hammers.

Of course you would need to reach a town to get that bonus. Financial Ai can swing balance slightly. Bureau bonus in capital? Watermills could still swing it.

 

[Fish Man]

Hmm, as enticing as this sounds...no. Communism just saves you way too much money. On deity it's the instant "economy fix" past 15-20 cities. In environmentalism your effective BPT could be halved or worse even with the commerce boosts.

 

[Pangaea]

Have to agree with the undefeated one above. Environmentalism is mostly for role-playing reasons tbh. The competition from especially SP is too strong, and Free Market if you go with corporations. +2 from windmills is a good bonus, but nowhere near enough compared with the wide-ranging bonuses to , AND from State Property. Medicine is also pretty late in the tech tree, and simply can't compete with SP in the hammer-economy era.

You are likely to be running Representation and have big cities from Biology farms, so you are better off growing even faster with SP and running specialists than having more leeway and better windmills.

Come to think of it, don't think I have ever run Environmentalism. Thanks for the detailed overview though.

 

[MAvL]

Late game you are often running wealth

That sounds like a worse case scenario to me, converting 1 into 1 is rarely good.

and using factories/hydro dams for 50% hammer bonus. So 2 hammers converts to 3 hammers.

That's more 75% accounting for forge as well, so it's 2 into 3.5. But into benefits from a higher bonus : 100% with market grocer and bank (wealth does not go through bank modifiers). I can see the advantage of running a high slider and not building much buildings (at least until factories), and compensating with wealth though. buildings are definitely must have, while buildings are not as crucial (though buildings are much easier to build once ones are built).

Conservatively, that's an overall about 1 for 1 conversion (assuming no grocer or no market, or accounting for the heavy cost of wealth buildings), which I think should be avoided. IMO Communist are much better used on armies or spaceship parts.

So 2H, 2C and +1 food. Vs +5 commerce from a town and printing press?

The comparison is flawed. SP watermill should be compared with FEUSS towns. The usefulness of many civics dampens in industrial era, running Free Spech, Universal Suffrage or even emancipation rather than something else has a very low opportunity cost. At times they can even be good civics before even accounting for the town boost. So the comparison is more:
+ +2 +2 watermill versus ++7 towns(I did miss +1 gold in my previous comment, from printing press I guess).

If we look at the difference,
+ + watermill versus +5 towns

If the excess gold is used to rush things (without Kremlin), the comparaison becomes, assuming similar and mulitipliers (if I am right, unlike slave, cash does not go through mulitipler, but does go through multiplier before becoming cash) :
+ +1 watermill versus 1.66 towns or
+ watermill versus 0.66 towns

Making watermill probably better than FEUSS Town in FEUSS towns worse case scenario, but not that huge of a margin.

When building wealth OTOH, watermills worse case, the comparison becomes about :
+ + watermill versus +5 towns
or
+ watermill versus +4 towns

Which is probably unclear. Even under Environementalism, food corps should have no issue transmuting 4 into 1, if that's even needed (you have windmills everywhere, and that's , not even ). OTOH, more WM food can mean less farms and even more gold through more FEUSS towns (FEUSS and SP are not exclusive), though on grassland, you typically don't need so much food that you have to fill riverside with watermills, both towns and watermills can coexist here (remember gold is what you are after in this scenario).

This situation (wealth in most towns) probably occurs less often/later than the other one (mass cash rush), making it less relevant. Still, the argument "at worse, you can make wealth" does not prove SP watermill are strictly better than FEUSS towns. It does assume using the extra food very efficiently, right after callously stating the extra hammer can be wasted in wealth.


To make the analysis thourough, it's relevant to estimate the value of +1. An old reflex from civ 3 made me assume that 1=1, but I must reconsider and see there are many situations food can be more to much more valuable :

Spoiler :

1. slavery : roughly 1->2 for small towns with granaries.
   
2. Replacing a basic windmill with a basic mine : +1 -> +2-1
3. Replacing a full windmill with a full mine : +1 -> +2-2 (+1 -> +2-4 with environementalism)
4. Replacing a full farm with a full Lumbermill/ SP workshop, ignoring : +2 -> +3 (+2 -> +4 for SP CS WS)
5. Replacing a full farm with a full town : 2->+1+7
6. Secialists, the number of specialist is usually limited, and the rate varies from mediocre to insanely good, depending on current value.
7. Simply growth. is valuable for itself.

Assuming is worth between 1 and 3 , and minimizing conversions, we have :

1. 1->2
   
2. 1->1 to1.66
3. +1 -> 0 to 1.33
4. 1->1.5 to 2
5. 1->4 to 5 (Assuming FUSS)

Slavery is the most consistent situation making 1=2 in most games early on, but is irrelevant when considering watermills vs towns in industrial era.

2 is likewise irrelevant to our issue.

7 is irrelevant to our issue, because farms are better for growth than watermill, and 5 and 6 cover farm conversions.

3 is barely appealing if we assume 3->1, not appealing otherwise. In practice, for the issue at stakes, FEUSS town + Env Windmill is +1+2+11, SP watermill + (RR) mine is +1+5+2, so +9 vs +3. So good town + good windmill clearly beat awesome watermill + bad mine (between 0 and 3 per tile), and it remains unclear without environmentalism (+7 vs +3).

4 and 6 are what make SP shine : pumping production on flat land and replacing farms. 2 watermills versus a farm and a SP CS Workshop is +2+4+4 vs +2+4, so net +4 gain and does not require CS.
2 watermills vs a farm and FEUSS town : +2+4+4 vs +2+1+7, so +3 vs +3 Clear advantage to SP watermill (between 0 and 1 per tile). In that case, all it takes is build wealth to show SP watermills are strictly superior.

The conversion rate seems to ranges from 1->0 to 1->2 with most relevant examples around 1->1.33 to 1->1.66

Close inspection of special cases suggest that as long as you run farms, running SP watermills to reduce the number of farms is very good. Further than that, they don't bring anything clearly better than alternatives (but reducing farms is already a lot).

On food heavy locations (grassland, flat or hill, lots of food sources, or floodplains) where you seldom run (non ressource) farms, SP watermill may be overkill food-wise and FEUSS towns may be slightly better.

I guess excess food is not overkill under Representation, for maps when the Venn diagram of Rep and SP have a non empty intersection.

what you gain in health will be lost in food..bad trade.

Not necessarilly. As long as a city is unhealthy, env watermills are equivalent to the presumably strong SP watermills. But env watermill has nothing special, and (Env) FEUSS towns for example is arguably better, so even better than SP watermills. Still assuming the city is unhealthy ofc.

As a RoT, I'd say, non SP Watermill are about 2 to 4 worse than FEUSS towns, and SP watermills are about 0-1 better than FEUSS towns. Non SP watermill are worth mentioning because equivalent to +SP watermill, as well as ressembling SP watermill on food heavy locations.

The additional +1 food can really help late game when health is a big issue.

The additional +1food does not merely helps, it's what's needed to make watermill better. When health is a big issue, health + town is better than food from wattermill, but yes, food is good too, and better when health is a mild issue.

 

[MAvL]

To use the content of last comment for SP vs ENV :

1. SP offers more flexibility in tile improvement : productive flat tiles not relying on forest.
2. SP Wattermills awesome when you would be running more farms otherwise (~+1 per tiles)
3. SP is typically between 3 and 10 saved per city in maintenance.
4. The argument Watermill is better than Env +6-8 (8-> transportation system) is fallacious. Each SP Watermill + is a 2-4 loss compared to a FEUSS town ++. Watermill is a SP tool to support similar growth than environmentalism, but it is better than Env as long as no , and worse when . At some point the disappear (hospital/genetics and co), but at some earlier point, loses a lot of value (specialists/miners). Overall quite situational, I can see the balance go either way.
   
5. Env offers more flexibility through corporations (presumably with a distant future Env -> FM transition in mind).
6. Env offers better value for hills.
7. Related to first and last point : both SP and Env are FEUSS compatible, but SP on its own already provides you with strong tiles. With more workshops and less towns, you can ignore US or FS if you so desire. Env on its own is not enough.
8. SP is usually a late game civic, Env is more of a transitional one, requiring one more switch.

SP does look significantly better overall.

One of the main points in favor of Env in a practical situation would be point 4 under favorable circumstances (not all required) : optimal city spacing, food heavy location, relatively few health ressources, lots of GP already born, riverside towns in place (not a plus compared to SP, but absence would be a minus), few rivers...

The bonus per town (morover a growth related bonus) still means that you'd much rather have a lot of midsize cities to grow into big ones rather than fewer already big cities, which is a case scenario which also strongly favors SP.

The second main point obviously is UN, if you feel environmentalism will be enforced (eg by you), it suffices for you to be better prepared than your opponents and for Environmentalism to be better for you than for your opponents, rather than better than SP would be for you. I guess it's less relevant in single player wher AI improves land with his feet anyway, but diplo victory is more relevant as well in single player.

 

[MAvL]

Medicine is also pretty late in the tech tree, and simply can't compete with SP in the hammer-economy era

Medecine is not that expensive compared to Assembly Line, which should obviously be researched beforehand. Biology is a must have anyway. Sure communism unlocks some really nice things, but not as crucial as AL, and that's also a dead end, so unless I want to grab the spy, the Kremlin or run an espionnage economy, it's not a priority. Workers might still be busy building rails, I can wait a few turns even when when I've set my heart on SP.

So I often go for it right after AL, and that is if I can't already have it through trade or espionnage.

You are likely to be running Representation and have big cities from Biology farms

Are you? The happiness boost is marginal at best by this time (You have much more than 6 big cities), and I don't think specialist output goes through building modifiers. Even if it does, is a 63 scientist really better than sbdy working a 27FS town (pre US)? Or an engineer better than a RR miner or than a RP windmill?

, so you are better off growing even faster with SP and running specialists than having more leeway and better windmills.

As stated in a previous comment, I think healthy towns are slightly better than unhealthy watermills, and specialists are trash by that time (much better tiles even without SP, onerous GP only necessary for corps conflicting with SP).


I guess representation and specialists may make sense for a small crowded empires, but I'm much more conviced by State Property halving of maintenance cost and watermills supporting more tile workers, like workshops and towns.

Besides, farms, even biology ones, are low value compared to other improvements. Rep specialist might have a really good rate of converting food into useful ressources on par with some of the best tile improvements if their output does go through building, but specialist + farm is the most farm intensive combo, making it subpar I would guess.

 

[krikav]

Nice post!

As always, one should play the map.
Certain map scripts have an overabundance of hills, and enviromentalism+windmills can be quite good in such maps.
Especially if there isn't many rivers, w/o rivers SP loses some of it's luster.

 

[AcaMetis]

Are you? The happiness boost is marginal at best by this time (You have much more than 6 big cities), and I don't think specialist output goes through building modifiers. Even if it does, is a 63 scientist really better than sbdy working a 27FS town (pre US)? Or an engineer better than a RR miner or than a RP windmill?

To clarify, yes, specialist output does go through applicable modifiers (an Engineer will benefit from running Bureau as well as a Forge/Factory/etc). Just keep the difference between and in mind, since Bureau will not boost a Merchant's +3 even at 0% slider, but a Marker/Grocer/Bank will boost it regardless of your slider settings.

 

[MAvL]

^ Thank you. Then I take back what I said, Rep specialists are definitely viable even that late, especially for small empires ) and more relevant), and bio farms may be better growth tools than Env . They're not incompatible though so the question remains SP vs Env and I don't think SP is always faster growth, especially when "health is a big issue"(Gumbolt).

And there are many occasions when you won't be running Rep specialist, especially with a big empire ) and less relevant than bonus applying to your whole empire, like HR bonus to a 12+ cities core, or than US town and cash rush ability, or even PS bonuses), making bio farms less appealing.

 

[Orion Pax]

Wow solid work trying to rehabilitate a civic I’ve never used once. Will have to try! As productive as you can make it, I rarely seem to need it to solve / problems that late, with so many other options? Obviously that’d change on higher difficulties, but I’m noticing a lack of dynamism here that other favorite civics have: SP addressing a real growing late-game issue, and Slavery converting pop into production, Caste making specialists unlimited, etc.

Perhaps it could be buffed in a way that doesn’t just pile on more? Say addressing global warming in the game - like: -50% global warming from your civ? (Of course that’d be more relevant in a stronger global warming mechanic..). The ability to convert to is interesting too. Some kind of X-factor(s)?

Oh and a truly “hippie” economy would of course be mostly peaceful, no? So if combined with warmaking that’d be more like a green imperialist economy of sorts..

 

[Orion Pax]

Oh, nuther env. mod idea:
Perhaps a small boast in diplo points (increases over time)?