How do you know when to give up the whip and what not to build: peacemonger strategy?

[guspasho]

How do you tell when the benefit of castes and population growth starts to outweigh the benefit of whipping? When is it optimal to make the switch? It's easy to rationalize holding on to slavery when I am still settling cities and I want their development to catch up to my older cities, or when I unlock a building and I can whip it out everywhere immediately, but then I delay population growth, cottage growth, and generating great people. I understand that when going for conquest/domination you should probably just stay in slavery forever, but what about when pursuing a peacemonger strategy?

Attached are a couple of games where I felt like I was holding on to slavery for way too long. I played as China and Inca on Earth18civ.

My goal with the Inca was the earliest possible space victory. I beelined the Great Lighthouse then settler spammed all of South America with the intention of cottaging it up, but when going for space every building seems worthwhile so by 1725AD I was still whipping out Banks and Levees.

I haven't decided on an endgame for China yet, or how to best make use of its rich land. As of 600AD I am still focused on grabbing resources in east Siberia and the Malay Archipelago, and with all the food and happiness resources I never have to stop or even slow down my whipping.

 

[Tephros]

Emancipation's benefits include lower upkeep cost and faster cottage development. Unfortunately it comes late in the game, so you may not have many cottages still developing. For a warmonger game, it's a real net negative not because you can't whip expensive buildings in your core cities, but because often a large captured cities population is going to starve anyway, so you might as well convert them into something.

As for core cities, I tend to use slavery most often when the city has a good growth rate and I either hit a happy cap, start being bogged down by lack of health, or my citizens start working marginal tiles (where are those lazy workers??), like unimproved forested grassland. Sometimes instead of chopping them I want to save them for later to become sawmills, be chopped for something more important than what I'm building, etc.... but a citizen working a 2 food, 1 production tile isn't really worth having... better than an angry citizen, but still. So in that situation it makes sense to use slavery to rush something useful.... Also if I have a distant city that has really high maintenance and I am losing money on it, it's always nice to be able to rush a courthouse. The real cost of slavery is not using specialists or available good tiles while you regrow, and not having good trade routes because of low population.

Basically, when all of your cities have good tiles to work, basic infrastructure (granary, courthouse, library if commerce based), slavery becomes less and less useful and more harmful to your commerce in particular. You'll want to keep it longer if you have cities that have really bad production but good food output... e.g. 1 tile islands with multiple food resources LOVE slavery. When I have a few cities that need help with production, or especially if I'm warmongering, I tend to hold on to slavery until the unhappiness penalty from not having emancipation starts to give me angry citizens. I'm generally not willing to use the culture slider to overcome this, unless of course I were going for a cultural victory and working caste system. And of course if I were to have a lot of cottages that need help growing, emancipation becomes more attractive.

More infrastructure will also make caste system less attractive over time, since you'll already be able to employ a large number of specialists with all the buildings built, just maybe not 10 of the same kind.

 

[pigswill]

Its worth considering that every pop you whip away is one less tile being worked. A pop15 city working a dozen villages/towns with a library will produce as much research as a pop7 city working 4-5 villages with a library, observatory and university.

 

[Jivilov]

Its worth considering that every pop you whip away is one less tile being worked. A pop15 city working a dozen villages/towns with a library will produce as much research as a pop7 city working 4-5 villages with a library, observatory and university.

Yeah, but if one "whipee" is worth 30 hammers and your city is only producing a couple per turn you're losing precious time. With a granary cities grow back twice as fast. Why sit back while the AI is cheating like crazy?

 

[Erlend78]

It's an important topic to discuss, hope we can get more views here.

I think Tephros points out the most important. Early game i like using the Whip, getting a monument and granary ASAP. After that i try to work the resources and other good tiles but i whip if the pop is so high that i'm working avarage/poor tiles. With cottage-city's i think differently, because of the obvious reason that they must be worked to grow. So i don't whip much in my Capital and second city. But in the next city's i usually whip quite often.

As pointed out, whipping is also important in Warmonger-strat, and in for example getting 6 University's or theaters to build Oxford or Globe T. Remember that in a Bureau-running Capital with maybe a second large cottage-city, and a third large HE prod-city, VERY much of the research and production happens in these city's.

So my thinking is that you let the city's grow bigger as the technology improves, so that you get more out of the tiles. No use working workshops with two hammers. I don't like the 3-food grassland-farms either. I haven't done the math, but i'm quite sure that if you have 2-3 good food-tiles and some mines in your prod-city, it's better to whip (with a granary) when the pop grows beyond these tiles, than starting to work 3-food grassland. Personally i don't like Caste System that much. In my Capital i usually have two Scientist's and hopefully Great Lib. I'f i dont have the Mids i rather work cottages and let the Capital grow, than working more scientists than the Library gives me. Except for the GP-points, the Specialists kind of sucks without Representation (or am i wrong??). A Scientist gives 3 research-points and uses two Food, i rather grow cottages . So i tend to stay in Slavery. I may switch to Caste if i launch a settler-wave and want fast culture-growth, or for example if i want to produce a Great Merchant for money or Priest for shrine (combined with Pasifism). So if i manage to get Great Lib, and run Pasifism and build NE, i usually get enough Great Scientist's to win the Lib-race quite easy, without running Caste. I never use Serfdom, at some point i usually switch to Emancipation.

 

[Virupaksha]

I think it depends a lot or whether you are spiritual or not.

In the early game the whip is just too powerful not to use. Even if not going for early war cities will want a granary and a forge, six will need libraries (standard size) and I normally try to build a barracks as well. Then there's lighthouses and harbours for coastal cities. Plus troops. I will always run slavery until I have this basic infrastructure.

After this my games tend to become a tech race towards liberalism and for this cities need to grow and cottages need to be worked. Also if peaceful there is less to build. I don't normally bother with markets unless I have a shrine and don't prioritise courthouses. It can make sense at this point to switch into caste system and run some specialists, scientists for philosophy and education bulbs or merchants for gold to upgrade troops. It's also nice to have enough population to whip six universities within a couple of turns of getting education. So if spiritual and not at war I'm likely to switch to caste for some time at this point, but will want slavery again for universities so without spiritual are the two turns of anarchy worth it? I tend to think not but thinking about it now perhaps I'm wrong.

Another advantage of caste is running an artist in a new city will pop it's borders in two turns.

As far as working tiles goes each citizen costs two food and (depending on difficulty) perhaps half a gold so working tiles worth only three like forests is not really worth it, save for investing in non-riverside cottages so they can grow. If a city has no tiles worth at least four to grow onto perhaps better to build a worker (unless Alex or Monty are knocking on the door).

In the later game both space and domination require a lot of production and slavery helps but hopefully I have some good production cities at this point so it's not so important like in the early game where basic infrastructure is needed in every city. I don't see much advantage to emancipation and generally will only switch to it when other ways of managing unhappiness have been exhausted.