I'm having trouble falling asleep tonight so I figured I'd pick your post apart a little... You be the judge of whether it's useful or not...
Eqqman said:
I've been tyring vigourously to improve my game at higher levels and get improved production via slavery instead of letting a city grow and working high-hammer tiles. However it's been a total disaster. Maybe you guys can clarify a few things I've been having a hard time wrapping my head around.
First off, you can't grow AND work high hammer tiles. You must choose to do one or the other at any given time. This might be a matter of semantics to many, but it is critical to the understanding of production in the game. The vast majority of the production you acquire is through sacrificing growth. What varies is the amount of growth you sacrifice. In actuality, whipping allows for more growth than not whipping simply because you are allowed to spend more population-turns working food tiles, not hammer tiles.
Let's say I have a size 1 city with 2F/1H on the city tile and want to complete a building where I have exactly 60 hammers remaining. The city has a choice to either work a 5 hammer tile or a 5 food tile. If I choose to work the hammer tile city growth is stagnant but I know that the building will be done in 10 turns- a length of time I may or may not find reasonable. To whip the building into completion either requires growth to size 4 or growth to size 2+ and stocking up 30 hammers. I know the latter option will take at least 30 turns- a totally unacceptable choice. How long does it take to get to size 4? If I assume that the 5 food tile is the only place in the radius that has a surplus, then I have only a +3 surplus to get me from size 1 to size 4. I'll be honest and admit I have no idea how long this takes (is there a thread that explains how much food it takes to go from size 'X' to 'X + 1'?) but I'm willing to bet it is more than 10 turns. So in the short term of just wanting this one item finished, the whip looks like a bad plan. I get the idea from reading this article that slavery is a production panacea in every city, but from my experience it only turns out to be worthwhile in places where you have a significant food surplus- like two or more food bonus tiles. Otherwise, as hammer costs go up, the population cannot grow fast enough to make the whip useful, especially in cities with high hammer tiles lying around fallow.
Honestly, that's a fairly easy situation. Work the 5 food tile (which will produce a 5 food surplus, not 3). From 1 population, it will take you only, at most, 5 turns to grow. Then, if you'd like, you can work the 5 hammer tile to speed development of the 60 hammer building (all the while, getting +3 food). After 5 more turns, you'll have the 30 hammers required to rush the building. This will leave you at 1 population, an extra 4 hammers toward your next project, and 18 food toward growth back to 2 population (1 turn away). Compare to the all-production case where you'd have just barely completed the project and have 0 food toward 2 population after the same number of turns.
This, of course, is the best I can do with the two tiles you've told me are available. If I knew more about your city, I may be able to do even better. For instance, if you had a granary, working the food would be ridiculously powerful, and I might just go up to 4 population and whip from there. I wouldn't even touch the hammer tile. A 5 food tile always provides a
significant food surplus, at least for the early game. It is plenty enough to base a whipping strategy on.
By the way, to figure out the number of food required to get to the next population level, use this formula: F = 20+2P. F is the food required. P is the current population level. For instance, it takes 22 food to grow from 1 to 2 and 24 to grow from 2 to 3. On other speeds, these numbers are multiplied by .67, 1.5 or 3. A granary essentially halves the amount of food needed to grow by allowing you to keep half the food you needed for the previous level. Growing from 1 to 4 with a 5 food surplus and no granary would require 72 food = 15 turns. Add a granary and you're looking at only needing 49 total food = 10 turns (that assumes you're starting with 0 food 'in the bank').
Someone in this thread mentioned the commerce aspect, and this is another area where slavery seems to fall short of its promises for me. In games where I'm merciless with the whip, I fall behind in science much faster than I would otherwise. Why? Because the citizens who are supposed to be working the cottages keep disappearing. I think there is an analysis in here that proves there is only an 8% difference in commerce production between the whip and no-whip cities. However, there is no way that a size 8 city where everybody is working a cottage is not going to significantly outproduce in commerce a city that has to keep growing back up to 8 from whips. Aside from the fact that you are not consistently getting commerce from the tile every turn, you are also losing the worker-turns to get the cottage improved, decreasing your future commerce output. Or, if you have a really high food output city, you should be better off having it consistently support specialists by the same logic.
Of course a size 8 city where
everyone works cottages will produce more commerce. But, it will produce
0 hammers. If you don't want hammers don't use slavery, pretty simple... If you do want hammers in that cottage city, though, you're going to have to take some citizens off of cottages. Using slavery, your citizens actually spend fewer turns not working cottages than they would if you got your hammers in most
any other way. Specialists are one of the most inefficient uses of food available. If you're running specialists for anything other than GP points or *maybe* research points, you could be doing the same thing more efficiently some other way. If you're running specialists in order to get hammers, please start using slavery instead; the difference is nearly incomprehensible.
Incidentally, that analysis you spoke of that showed an 8% differnce in the commerce output of a whipped and no whipped city actually had
more commerce output in the
whipped city.
So what I'm getting at is there must be more to slavery than just the 'always work food, always whip to build' mantra that this thread implies to me. If it was really that simple I would expect to be having an easier time taking advantage of this system than I have been so far.
It looks to me as if there must be some point in which you have to allow your city to grow (and remain grown) in order to get any real use out of it. Slavery seems to be an early-game tool for quick expansion which you then leave on the shelf, except for perhaps later when you want a quick spurt of building in cities with a significant population surplus.
For the most part, in my games, my priorities really are food > commerce > hammers. I'd only condone working hammer tiles in cities that have little or no surplus food and are surrounded by efficient hammer-producing tiles. If you really prioritize food highly and deprioritize hammer-generating tiles, you'll find that growth, even while whipping every 10 turns, is still possible. You must, of course, settle almost all of your cities in such a way that they have access to an abundant food source (usually a single 4-5 food tile will do, or maybe a couple of 3 food tiles). You'll often grow back to the previous population level quickly after whipping which leaves room to grow to fill your happiness cap (and work more commerce tiles). You must really get it ingrained into your head that your food tiles are the most powerful tiles in your empire.
What is the early game like for the slavery experts? I've been trying to do the following:
> Start a unit so my city can grow to size 2
> At size 2, switch to worker so I can improve a food-bearing tile. This guy will be whipped out.
> After the worker make a unit or a granary, based on availablility. City grows to size 2.
> When I'm back at size 2 I switch to making a Settler who will be whipped. If the city has multiple food bonus tiles then I might grow to size 4 instead while making units so that I can whip 2 pop instead of one on the Settler.
> Settler founds second city which will start on an Obelisk that gets whipped at size 2. I've been finding it vital to do these since when I found new cities I'm often trying to maximize the resources it will get, as a consequence these resources are all in the outer ring 99% of the time.
> By now Barbarians are here, so I'm off to whipping units. I have to try and mix this in with more Workers and Settlers. By 1 AD I'm lucky to have 4 cities with 2 workers. I might have 2 military units per city. The cities are all size 1-2 from the whipping. My science is now total crap- it's 20+ turns to get anything useful, like Alphabet, CoL, Mathematics, etc. The two Workers are not enough to adequately develop my cities. No Wonders have been built. So basically my game is in the toilet. Now, I might have been able to use some of those troops to capture Workers from the AI, but often the AI is too far away to get a Worker in a timely manner, or I'm too busy with the Barbarians, or 100 other reasons. But that's a topic for a different thread. My main concern is finding out how to really do well using slavery.
Firstly, I don't like the early growth to two unless that extra population can work an improved tile. Generally, population should never be working unimproved tiles. They just don't give much benefit. If you could manage a four-food unimproved tile (bonus resource on floodplains, which can only occur on certain maps) I might recomend growing to 2 first, if only to whip quickly.
Second, it sounds like you have some other defficiencies in the game. What level are you playing on? I can't imagine how you could be working high food tiles, only whipping after residual unhappines has worn off, and not growing, especially if you prioritize a granary as you say. A city with a granary and a 5 food tile will only take, at most 3-4 turns to grow back one population. In 10 turns, it can grow back 3 population (starting at 5). There's no way you're whipping more than 3 population. My only conclusion is that you're whipping too frequently or you're not really working the high food tiles
all the time.
Third, 20 turns to alphabet is pretty much par-for-the-course. It's an expensive tech for the time.
Fourth, I'd suggest you learn to play without whipping first. I can't fathom how whipping would actually hurt the play of an experienced player. Just avoid slavery for now. Learn how to generate hammers through other means. Then, when you start using slavery again, you can appreciate its increased efficiency.
Fifth, found your second city right next to a food resource and whip a granary first. Then, after 10 turns, maybe whip an obelisk if a religion hasn't spread, or you wouldn't prefer a library. Avoid settling cities where the resource(s) you need to get the city started are outside your initial cultural border. This is where creative civs have an advantage (you could build the stonehenge, but too many people become dependant upon it). Don't build cities that maximize the resources in their borders. Instead, build cities that efficiently make use of the resources available at the right times. If needs be, that may require more cities. For instance, if your capital has two 5+ food resources in its radius, don't be afraid to settle your second city to make use of one of those. Your capital won't really miss it for a long time (By then, you've already won).
Sixth, if you really insist upon whipping settlers and workers in your games now, try whipping other units which are nearly complete and then applying the overflow hammers to a settler or worker. This allows you to achieve a much better food to hammer conversion rate than you would normally get while building a worker or settler. Be careful that the amount of overflow doesn't excede the total cost of what you're rushing, otherwise you don't get all of the overflow. (Rushing a 15 hammer warrior that only requires 2 more hammers, producing 28 overflow, will only leave you with 15 overflow by the beginning of the next turn.)
