How Do I Get Hammers Early?

[CivIVMonger]

It seems as though hammers are very rare in this game early-on. Is there a way to get decent hammers early on in the game? When a rush or strike is potent. I love war in this game, but hammers always get me down. I can never produce enough of them to build units. I need some tips if you are willing to get them.

 

[r_rolo1]

Yes, hammers are scarce in early game, but there are two things that are abundant : food and forests. Those two, given the right technologies and civics ( Bronze working and Slavery ) can be converted in hammers

 

[Edzako]

Ivory+hunting will give you decent amount of hammers too.

 

[CivIVMonger]

You are right, though food is limited on your happy cap. Which in the early game, happens to be 5...

 

[r_rolo1]

That works well, because the more efficient area for whipping is the 3-4 pop and at 6 pop ( one ) you can whip 3 pop Not that you need to whip 3 pop to get a axeman

 

[mariogreymist]

Use that cap, along with the ability to "whip" two population off when it hits six. Build a cottage or two to work, and keep growth behind the unhappiness of your whipping until it is time to whip again. The cottages can even be on grassland hills or plains, making them worth a hammer as you work them. It takes real micromanagement to get every possible early . And that's not even to mention the fact you can build a mine as well, and get +2 from a hill.

 

[CivIVMonger]

True, but that is still a scrounge. Though, units of that time cost far less. In the industrial era, I am getting close to 100 hammers a turn in a few cities...

I don't know, it just seems as though it is too hard to build swords and cats at that time. The ability to spam units in later era's is not available. What about the classical period, how would you get good production in that era? You have access to more improvements, but your civilization should be going through some serious growing pains at that point.

 

[Gooblah]

Try coordinating whips and chops. It's a bit of micromanaging, but's it's effective.

Get your capital to pop 4-5, then start queuing up military units. Start two chops: the first should finish and give the hammer boost when the first Axe (or Chariot or Sword or whatever) has two turns left; the second be timed to occur three turns after that. After the first chope, whip the unit (this requires some tricky timing, so practice; if you can't get it to work, whip the second unit) - the rollover hammers will complete the second unit in one turn; then those rollover hammers AND the hammers from the forest chop should set up a nice army pretty quickly. Repeat whenever you have excess food in a city.

For a Sword/Cat war, Mathematics needs to be researched to unlock Construction (IIRC), so that allows the +50% hammer boost from chopping.

 

[CivIVMonger]

2 ?'s:

1: How would your city grow back in time to continually whip it at 4/5 pop every other unit construction?

2:I know that it will vary, but at about what time would you complete your army of swords/cats, standard sized army, no speciefications. I am curious because I don't know how you can expand/improve/tech and infastructure meanwhile build a state of the art sword cat SoD at the same time. On top of that, get it built early.

 

[Gooblah]

2 ?'s:

1: How would your city grow back in time to continually whip it at 4/5 pop every other unit construction?

It doesn't. By the time I use Swords and Cats, I usually have 5-6 cities that are capable of doing this. By situating cities near food resources (Corn, Wheat, Rice, Pigs), and working said tiles, you can usually grow back pop quickly. I usually rotate through cities and whip/chop in multiple cities to get it working.

2:I know that it will vary, but at about what time would you complete your army of swords/cats, standard sized army, no speciefications. I am curious because I don't know how you can expand/improve/tech and infastructure meanwhile build a state of the art sword cat SoD at the same time. On top of that, get it built early.

Time? Well, how do I put it. It's really hard to say. I play Emperor/Marathon, so the times are a bit skewed, but I aim for 1AD, considering that most AIs don't reach Feudalism or other early medieval techs by then. Basically, my cities rotate infrastructure and military builds. My capital usually has the Granary, Barracks, Library and occasionally Lighthouse done by the time I'm prepping for a Sword/Cat war, so it spams units, while secondary production cities (usually near coastal food resources and hills or inland hills + floodplains or whatever) build Barracks -> units -> infrastructure.

Since my technique is kind of...situational and micromanaging intensive (which gets pretty annoying after a while), I'd advise you to scout aggressively and find sites with 1 food resource and hills/production resources (Horses, Iron, Copper, and Plains Cows).

 

[mariogreymist]

Another piece of advice for building an early SoD is to share food resources among a tightly gathered core of 5-7 cities. Once you hit that population cap, you won't need the 2-3 big food resources you hopefully found for your capital. So share them (and the they generate via slavery) by building cities very close to the capital. This keeps upkeep costs down, reduces the strain on workers, and does so without sacrificing early growth, production potential of either city (when done appropriately). I've included a picture of what this looks like in practice. The game is Emperor level, and from the point pictured (just when I've hooked up iron to make Praetorians, sword replacement, str 8) I would go on to melee rush my one continental neighbor in a very rapid early demise for mother Russia. Note how I've got four cities practically on top of one another...that's quite deliberate. The one city in the NE is there to get revenue from Gems (An entire continent in the classic period benefits greatly from income producing resources) and to provide a good location from whence to launch a flank attack as Catherine's defenses focus on the main invasion from the south.

 

[jmas]

<snip> Once you hit that population cap, you won't need the 2-3 big food resources you hopefully found for your capital. So share them (and the they generate via slavery) by building cities very close to the capital. <snip> I've included a picture of what this looks like in practice.

Since resource bubbles aren't on, I'm not sure how many food resources you are sharing--could you tell us? I can see fishing boats at Antium for that city only. I'm guessing Rome is sharing a resource with each of Ravenna and Cumae? And I don't see any food resource at Arretium but maybe it's just not visible to me. I'm working on developing this aspect of my game--I have more overlap in my current game than previous ones, which I think is helping.

 

[mariogreymist]

There are bananas to the NW of Rome, shared with Ravenna, worth 4 now (farmed) and five later (with calendar/plantation) and a fw corn (6!!) shared with Cumae. Antium could have been located 1w of where it is to access one of two clams to which Rome also has access. I didn't do this simply because I knew that Rome was already doing lots of sharing, and the more you share, the less easy it is to maximize all of the cities in the late game. Arretrium is sitting on Sugar, and has three more sugar (all in jungle) waiting to be cleared. You'll better see the resources on my dotmap:

 

[jmas]

There are bananas to the NW of Rome, shared with Ravenna, worth 4 now (farmed) and five later (with calendar/plantation) and a fw corn (6!!) shared with Cumae. Antium could have been located 1w of where it is to access one of two clams to which Rome also has access. I didn't do this simply because I knew that Rome was already doing lots of sharing, and the more you share, the less easy it is to maximize all of the cities in the late game. Arretrium is sitting on Sugar, and has three more sugar (all in jungle) waiting to be cleared.

Ah okay. Thank you. I follow you except I'm a little confused by "fw corn (6!!)" What do you mean by "fw"? Irrigated corn is always 6...

 

[mariogreymist]

With access to water...It is the premier food resource, and my favorite to share.

 

[Virtual Alex]

The thing with whipping (which I just very recently "got") is that you can whip more than 1 population and still only suffer -1 unhappiness for 15 turns. So you can whip and kill 4 population and only suffer -1 unhappiness for 15 turns. By the time the city gets back to the happy cap the unhappiness will have worn off.

So you when you are at the happy cap, you want to whip 2-3 population at a time, so you can grow back and diffuse the unhappiness at the same time.

 

[mariogreymist]

I almost never whip off one population...the cost in unhappiness is simply too high in any city with good growth potential. I like whipping two on the turn the city exceeds the cap, then using cottages/mines to pace growth back to the cap in time with the lost happiness, while letting the neighboring city use the big food resources to hit their caps. (and in turn whip off two, and let the first city get the food back to build a worker/settler or to grow back to cap)

 

[jmas]

With access to water...It is the premier food resource, and my favorite to share.

I see. Yes, irrigated corn is good. Fish also give 6 with lighthouse, but often aren't as easy to share (plus, although it's a minor point, getting the 6 in another city requires 2 lighthouses).

 

[mariogreymist]

True...and coastal fish actually will net 2 as well, making them superior (with a lighthouse) to even river corn. But like you said...not as easy to share, and requires sailing/lighthouses.

 

[yanner39]

Another piece of advice for building an early SoD is to share food resources among a tightly gathered core of 5-7 cities. Once you hit that population cap, you won't need the 2-3 big food resources you hopefully found for your capital. So share them (and the they generate via slavery) by building cities very close to the capital. This keeps upkeep costs down, reduces the strain on workers, and does so without sacrificing early growth, production potential of either city (when done appropriately). I've included a picture of what this looks like in practice. The game is Emperor level, and from the point pictured (just when I've hooked up iron to make Praetorians, sword replacement, str 8) I would go on to melee rush my one continental neighbor in a very rapid early demise for mother Russia. Note how I've got four cities practically on top of one another...that's quite deliberate. The one city in the NE is there to get revenue from Gems (An entire continent in the classic period benefits greatly from income producing resources) and to provide a good location from whence to launch a flank attack as Catherine's defenses focus on the main invasion from the south.

This is interesting. So you are bunching together these cities so that when you whip 2 or 3 population points in a city, you switch the worked tiles so that the city you just whipped grows back quicker?

Is this worthy given that late in the game, you'll end up with smaller-size cities? Or is the point that you whip, build prets to conquer the continent or get more cities?

I do some overlap, but never to this extent. If I understand you correctly, I've been missing out.