I've never seen so much food in my entire life

[frob2900]

And I'm not talking about my familys christmas dinner

A Great Plains map (prince/gandhi) where I got a location with 4 pigs, 2 deer and 1 corn + marble (attached). I'm feeling slightly belligerent so I was thinking of conquering the entire world with a Globe Theatre/whipping factory, but since I've never done this I was wondering if anyone has any good tips/ideas on this? Can it be done in time (since I'll need 5 cities with theates + Globe build) so that one city makes a noticeable difference in military production?

I.e. How translate this much food into military power?

(A gp farm/culture race might also be nice, but there are a lot of opponents so I'll at least need to subdue a lot of enemies before going into builder mode..)

 

[vra379971]

I've done it before. It will make a massive differance to make a troop a turn.

 

[shyuhe]

later on in the game, you can also get nationalism from liberalism, and then draft like mad. If you can draft riflemen or infantry, it's very powerful (of course this will be pretty late in the game...).

You can also whip non-wonders and transfer the overflow into wonder construction. There are so many wonderful things you can do with that much food...

 

[svv]

Try to get as many religions as possible there in Dehli before you build another city. Use the whip and the chop for production. Use specialists for science. Build the wonders that need marble, since you have the marble there.

When you've obtained all the religions you think you can, or you just can't wait any more, found some more cities (have settlers, workers, and garrison units ready). Make Dehli your food/religion/money city (farm the rest of it), and pick out another good site where you can have lots of cottages for your science city.

 

[frob2900]

Ok, I've started up.. what a bloodbath.. I had iron in the fat cross of delhi -> whipped swordmen, catapults.. My other cities also have ca 2 corn or pigs each so I pumped out lots of units..

Its now 1100 AD and 6 civilizations out of 12 are dead and I just got nationalism online. The globe theatre is up in delhi and the best unit I can draft is macemen..

Never actually used nationalism so it will be fun to see what happens (gunpowder in 5 turns..)

The religious path would actually have been fun to try since I could have whipped droves of missionaries at will. Would be fun to see a city with 2-3 shrines of mega religions.. But since I had 12 opponents on a small map (yep, overcrowded) I really needed to start fighting ASAP. Thing is, once one starts to fight wars its hard to stop

This will probably end with conquest/domination..

Next I will however roll up a new Great Plains (those things are food crazy) and see what evil I can get up too with a similar start...

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I.e. How translate this much food into military power?

(A gp farm/culture race might also be nice, but there are a lot of opponents so I'll at least need to subdue a lot of enemies before going into builder mode..)

In my exerience, that's really too much food for the Heroic Theatre. Remember that you can only grow one pop per turn, and you can only produce one unit per turn. Furthermore, you take an efficiency hit if you try whipping before you've invested any hammers, and unless the math comes out perfect you are going to have a lot of overflow running around that you'll want to drop into something.

You are going to be whipping every two turns, occassionally resting for a turn to avoid losing overflow, so you only need enough food surplus to grow back two or three people. What are you going to do with the rest of it?

Furthermore, you are Gandhi, right? Spi/Phi, or Spi/Ind depending on which game you are playing, sitting on top of marble bread basket? Doesn't this scream Poly - Masonry - Parthenon, etc? If you want production, you can later look toward Angkor Wat and a bunch of priest slots to convert all the surplus food to hammers and Great Prophets.

OK, that's not what you asked.

Let's see - is this epic speed? That's going to impact the timing a bit.

I would expect this city to go through three phases.

In the opening, its going to act as a settler and worker pump, while the rest of your civ does the heavy lifting. Some care required because if you are pounding the food you aren't pulling commerce.

Second phase, you are in Hereditary rule, whipping out axes as fast as you can. The happy benefit of the garrisons mean you can whip at maximum efficiency. The overflow gets tossed into whatever buildings you need. Notice that while we are producing axes every three turns, we are actually sending them out of the city every ten turns (because they need to hang around dealing with the happy).

Third phase, you start putting the overflow into the national wonders. Drama opens up the culture slider, so you can start managing happy that way (so you can start thinking about using the troops). If you are whipping for two pop every other turn, your overflow will keep climbing - so remember that it is capped by the size of the unit you are whipping; bleed it off into a build before it starts to rot on you.

Once the globe is finished, the party starts.

 

[frob2900]

The Hereditary rule thing sounds really nice.. A good synergy between the whip and the need for happy faces... I think I'm going to try that with a restart on the same map (I just played the game to what would amount to a ca 1500 AD conq/domination)..

So whip axes, axes, axes using the garrison for happiness giving a large city early on then globe theatre and unleash the troops?

My gut feeling is to use caste system together with the above to beeline drama as soon as I'm building offensive units so they will be useful when unleashed (unfortunately scientists seem like the only way to research on this map, very commerce poor).

 

[tycoonist]

i would rush to caste and pump out scientists until... in fact just pump them out forever..lol
keep bulbing and leave other cities to build military which shall conquer the world due to your advanced techs, domination by 1500

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

My gut feeling is to use caste system together with the above to beeline drama as soon as I'm building offensive units so they will be useful when unleashed (unfortunately scientists seem like the only way to research on this map, very commerce poor).

You can make that work, sort of, with a bit of spiritual zim zam.

Remember, for efficient whipping, you want to have at least one hammer invested in your target build. There's no advantage to be in the slavery civic while this happens. Nor is there an advantage to being in slavery when you produce the unit, or pour the production overflow into your next build. So you might as well be in Caste System while that is going on.

In other words, instead of running a continuous cycle start-whip/train-overflow-start-whip/train-overflow-start..., you can apply a bit of creative management to the production queue (using different types of units) so that the pattern looks like start-start-start-start-start- ! train-overflow-train-overflow-train-overflow... Now your whips are 15 turns apart instead of 3 turns apart, so you have time for a couple civic switches, if you want them. That should allow you to jump back to caste system just as you return to full size, for example, and run 10 turns in caste before switching back to slavery for 5 turns.

Depending on how much overflow you are getting, you may be able to roll it over from one unit to the next, skipping a turn of overflow. So you might be able to do crazy things like training most of your whipped units with Theocracy enabled, but switching back to OrgRel just as you drop the overflow into a building again. Off the top of my head, I think this doesn't work with ancient and classical units, but when you start working with Elephants and Maces and so on it may actually work out.

Warning - this is all thought experiment; it may not turn out to be quite so simple in practice.

 

[cabert]

The Hereditary rule thing sounds really nice.. A good synergy between the whip and the need for happy faces... I think I'm going to try that with a restart on the same map (I just played the game to what would amount to a ca 1500 AD conq/domination)..

So whip axes, axes, axes using the garrison for happiness giving a large city early on then globe theatre and unleash the troops?

My gut feeling is to use caste system together with the above to beeline drama as soon as I'm building offensive units so they will be useful when unleashed (unfortunately scientists seem like the only way to research on this map, very commerce poor).

commerce poor? with gold and flood plains to the East?
build a cottage on those pigs, and you'll have commerce
I know it's a bit of a waste, but it's doable, and still better than a cottage on grassland.

About this city, I would have settled one W (1 less food, but more hills and 1 more hammer when working the plains)

 

[frob2900]

I meant commerce poor in the sense that Gandhi is not financial and there are few rivers -> no early boost..

Yeah, youre right about moving the city.. I just got so excited when seeing all that food that I just checked if it was in the fat cross then settled, without thinking about it... 1 less food is no harm done for that particular city

 

[cabert]

I meant commerce poor in the sense that Gandhi is not financial and there are few rivers -> no early boost..

Re: moving city, perhaps there is such a thing as too much food, but since I've never seen such a food rich area I thought it would be fun to put it all in the fat cross and see what options that gives..

moving 1 tile west wouldn't make you miss any of thos food bonuses, but you would have 1 less grassland (which you wouldn't work int he next 5000 years anyway) for 1 more plains (with a hammer = something you might need)

 

[AcCoL]

looks like the city is going to have pork chops for christmas dinner!

 

[Emp. Killyouall]

I have had a Great Plains city with around 15 FPs, including 2 FP Rice (7 FPT!). I think it had a couple plains and 1 forest grassland, too. Pretty nice city. Never finished that game, the city was suffering massive unhealthiness... Even though I was Expansive...

 

[obsolete]

I would probably just get globe theatre and run a super-fortress city.

 

[Cheeseisgood]

i've had that, but with Ivory... 11 Ivory all bunched together!

 

[acidsatyr]

cottage over pigs in delhi?? commerce poor? what you talking about?

yeah, make Delhi GP factory , but make sure you end up playing CE.....

 

[Rancid Sushi]

These are the types of starts a noob like me dreams about. Now you just have to prevent Judaism or Islam from spreading to the city or you could be facing starvation.

Seriously though, if you use caste system to generate lots of specialists, will they all go away once you switch to emancipation?

 

[Blake]

There's no way one city can use all that food you need to place another couple cities which overlap, definitely give the two pigs on the west side to a city on the river.