Micromanagement is alive and well in Civ 4!

[Zombie69]

1. 10 turns you don't get the profits of the whipped citizen ( in hammers or in gold or both)

This profit, if hammers, would normally be 1 per turn (plus the 2 food to feed the citizen). No non-bonus tile can provide more than that, while still giving enough food to feed the citizen. I'd much rather have 30 hammers than just 10.

2. you have to rearrange a citizen from a food-poor but hammer/gold-rich tile to a food-rich but hammers/gold-poor tile, losing this way more hammers and/or gold

In other words, you have to stop working worthless hammers and start working much more valuable food. I don't see the problem. As for commerce, no need to stop working it. I usually have cottages all over the place, no farms at all in most cities, and still manage enough food to whip every 10 turns easily.

3. you don't get 30 hammers extra , but what you already got as hammers is filled up to 30. What you really get is always less then 30.

I don't understand this statement. What's the difference between "extra" and "added to what you already get"? That's the very definition of extra. As for always less than 30, that's not true if the best unused tile you've got only provides 2 food, or the equivalent in commerce/hammers (e.g. 1 food and 2-3 hammers).

Maybe you mean that if you only need 25 more hammers, you're getting only 25. If so, you're wrong. You'll get 30 regardless of how many you need, and the rest will be used as overflow.

 

[DaviddesJ]

This profit, if hammers, would normally be 1 per turn (plus the 2 food to feed the citizen). No non-bonus tile can provide more than that, while still giving enough food to feed the citizen. I'd much rather have 30 hammers than just 10.

If you work a grassland/farm one turn, and a grassland/hill/mine the next, you generate 4 food and 3 hammers over 2 turns, so that's 1.5 hammers/citizen/turn, if you have the right (non-bonus) terrain.

Since the most food you can generate from non-bonus tiles is 1 food/citizen/turn, the cost of each food is about 1.5 hammers. So, if you need 15 food (approximately) to replace your lost citizen, that's the equivalent of 22 hammers, and you run at -1 size which is the equivalent of 15 hammers, then your +30 hammers from slavery is costing you 37.

It really depends on what terrain you have. Pop rushing is very powerful if you have a couple of bonus food tiles. If you need to build farms on non-bonus tiles to generate the food, then it's not particularly powerful (at least, leaving the bug aside). Of course, one usually tries to be in the former case.

 

[Zombie69]

You're counting the same thing twice, and adding the two figures together. Assuming the hill-farm combo you talk about, the whip gives 30 instead of 15, which is a 15 hammer profit. There's no such thing as 30 costing 37.

 

[DaviddesJ]

You're counting the same thing twice, and adding the two figures together.

No, I'm not counting the same thing twice. If you whip every 10 turns, the maximum size of the city is reduced by 1 (you have a permanent -1 happiness), which costs you 15 hammers. And, in addition, you have to generate an extra 15 food every 10 turns, to regrow the citizen you whipped, which costs you 22 hammers. Those are two different things, and they add up to 37.

Here's a very concrete example that shows this. Happiness limit of 6. A static city of size 6 can work 2 grassland farms and 4 grassland hills; over 10 turns, that generates 120 food (exactly enough to maintain its size) and 130 hammers. If it whips 1 pop every 10 turns, then it's limited to size 5, and it needs to generate an extra 14 food every 10 turns to regrow after whipping. So it needs to work 2.2 grassland farms and 2.8 grassland hills; over 10 turns, that generates 114 food (exactly enough to regrow to size 5 after whipping) and 94 hammers. Add in 30 hammers from the whip, and you get 124 hammers, i.e., 6 less than the static city without whipping.

 

[Zombie69]

All right, then we have the following result :

In a city with no bonus resource whatsoever (not even flood plains), and lots and lots of grasland hills, and no intention of building cottages (which we showed above were better than mines, and still let you grow), and not using the pop rush exploit, mines are better than whipping.

However, this situation will pretty much never be encountered in an actual game. Besides, whipping would still be by far superior if you used the exploit. And even without the exploit, whipping would still be superior if you just forgot about farms and mines and used cottages and whipped. Finally, even if you insist on using worthless mines and farms with the whip, you'll still get better production than normal even without the exploit as long as you whip more than 1 pop at a time. Put all these things together (exploit, cottages, whip multiple pop), and then it's not even close. And you can do all these without any bonus food resource.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Finally, even if you insist on using worthless mines and farms with the whip, you'll still get better production than normal even without the exploit as long as you whip more than 1 pop at a time.

That depends on how many tiles you have of each terrain type. Suppose you have just 2 grassland farms available, and 4 grassland hills. Take the same city, with happiness limit 6, and suppose you whip 2 pop at a time. The best you can do is to start with a size 5 city with a full food box (30 food). Whipping takes you to size 3, you work 2 farms and 1 hill, and grow to size 4 with 30+3-13 = 20 food. Then you work 2 farms and 2 hills for 4 turns, and grow to size 5 with 20+8-14 = 14 food. Then you work 2 farms and 3 hills for 16 turns, to refill the food box. Net output is 1*4+4*7+16*10+60 = 252 hammers, in 21 turns, for exactly 12 hpt. The static size-6 city produces 13 hpt.

If you start with a size-6 city with 15 food (static case), that's even worse. Pop rush takes you to size 4 with 15 food; you work 2 farms and 2 hills for 7 turns, to grow to size 5 with 15 food. Then you work 2 farms and 3 hills for 15 turns, to grow to size 6 with 15 food. Net output is 7*7+15*10+60 = 259 hammers, in 22 turns, for 11.77 hpt.

 

[Zombie69]

I don't think i've ever seen a city with only two flat grassland tiles and no food bonus. Such a city would be so crappy, i wonder if it would even be worth founding. It could never grow past size 6, except with plains farms which are near useless anyway. Just to get to size 6, it would need two grassland farms which aren't much good either.

 

[BigEd420]

Hey Zombie.In your OP you wrote"The best ways to abuse the system are using 1 pop for 60 hammers when needing 31 to 38 with a 25% bonus (getting 30 hammers for free because of the bug), or using 5 pop to get 210 hammers when needing 181 to 187 with a 25% bonus (getting 60 hammers for free). "
I was wondering if you actually whip for 5 pop?I'm still working on using the whip correctly and usually only whip for 2/3 pop max.
Example:Often I'll que something up till it has enough hammers built up to only cost 2 pop and then I work on something else till I'm close to unhappiness.At this point I switch back and use the whip to complete it only dropping me 2 pop.

My question is:Am I waiting to long to use the whip and should I be trying to Whip more pop each time?

Oh Yea props for taking the time to post all the info.

Thanks
Ed

 

[Zombie69]

I whip for 5 pop whenever building a bank or a university. Anything else in the game that costs 200 hammers or more is also a good candidate.

To answer your second question, if you always have at least -1 unhappiness in your city from whipping, you know you're whipping often enough. If not, then it's time to whip something fast! Whipping should be done every 10 turns or more, no matter how much pop you use every time. The amount of pop used depends on the amount of pop that your city can regrow in about 10 turns.

 

[angeleyes]

Zombie69, if you have a city that makes 35 hammers/turn, would you whip it to get 30 hammers ? Not, i think, thus you must understand what i mean with extra.
With extra, i mean that if your city makes 18 hammers/turn if you don't whip, and whipping gives you 30 hammers, then the real profit of whipping is (30-18) 12 hammers.
When having citizens on forest tiles, whipping is almost always good, i agree, but e.g. if you have to give up a plainhill-tile under bureaucratie, you lose 6 hammers/turn

When using the exploit, whipping is always good, but the game is spoilt for me.
I am curious wich level you play? Still think you don't see the backside of whipping.

 

[DaviddesJ]

With extra, i mean that if your city makes 18 hammers/turn if you don't whip, and whipping gives you 30 hammers, then the real profit of whipping is (30-18) 12 hammers.

This makes no sense. If you whip a citizen, you still get the regular production of your city that turn. So you aren't giving up the 18 hammers in order to get 30 hammers. You get the 30 hammers in addition to what the city normally produces.

Perhaps you're thinking of the Civ3 production model, where you get no production overflow, so, when you use slavery to fill the production box, any regular production from your city on that turn is wasted. But Civ4 doesn't work that way.

See #305 for a more accurate analysis of what the cost actually is.

 

[angeleyes]

Zombie69, Daviddesj, you are right, i'm confused with civ3 . So whipping is more attractive then i thought .. Still if you have to give up a hill for it it's not good, but with city's where you work forestgrass, then whip away those forestgrass.

Daviddesj, i agree with you, see point 1. and 2. of post 301.

 

[malekithe]

...Still if you have to give up a hill for it it's not good...

Note true in most cases. If the singular goal of the city is high production, then yes, working a hill is often better than slavery (a grassland hill, mind you). If, however, the city is a commerce city, then it is better to whip because you will spend more time working the commerce tiles.

Moral of the story... Production cities should start whipping when they are out of "efficient" hammer-producing tiles (I define this as 2F 2H, 1F 3H, 0F 5-6H, or better). Commerce cities should start whipping from the moment they hit 2 population and have a "sufficient" food surplus (I like at least 4, but 3 could work).

 

[PhanTasmO]

Great post, I love whipping my population in the early stages of the game and if I see things going downhill later I will switch back to slavery and whip out the needed improvements asap (although this must be done very carefully in the later stages of the game as you dont want to lose a ton of commerce).

 

[ungy]

Great post--thanks Zombie (and Daviddesj, Malekithe). I have clearly not been whipping enough and I now see the light (or the lash). Although I'm not too crazy about the bug and exploiting it even w/o that I have been way underestimating the value of the high food tiles w/whipping. I think makes a big improvement in my overall game

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Most of This thread may be obsolete with Warlords. They have already reported that commerce, Gold, Science, (Hammers+Food)? are being rounded off to two decimal places.

It is possible they may have fixed the whipping bug too. If they fixed the 'multiple of 4' bug, they may have revised the 'multiple of 30 bug'. someone who has Warlords should check if the 'break point' method still exists. (60 or 30 hammers for 1 pop depending on when you whip, as opposed to a fixed 37.5 hammers for a 25% bonus)

[although slavery would still be good, Micromanaging it wouldn't be as important]

 

[armstrong]

Hmm, if they didn't fix the 30 hammer bug in Warlords, won't that make Imperialistic a very good trait? The +25% bonus building settlers to means you can utilize the 1 pop/60 hammers almost immediately...

Wow, I really hope they did fix it, or else it's ridiculous. If you can exchange 60 food+production on a settler for 1 pop (11 food with a granary, 22 otherwise), and you get a 25% bonus on the other 40, you're effectively only paying 32+11 = 43 (or 54 without a granary) hammers for every settler!

 

[Compromise]

They did fix the whipping bug in Warlords. In this thread, this is confirmed by Blake, who did his own fix with the v1.61 SDK. So, now, one normal-speed pop is worth 30 hammers. I guess even the epic speed person is now worth 45 instead of the (erroneous) 44.

I don't think this invalidates the use of slavery as a good source of high-food, low-pop hammers. But it does reduce to a large extent the micromanagement needed. Now, you'll mostly be concerned with rushing about every 10 turns to minimize the unhappiness penalty. And there are plenty of situations where you'll still want to whip more frequently.

 

[armstrong]

They did fix the whipping bug in Warlords. In this thread, this is confirmed by Blake, who did his own fix with the v1.61 SDK. So, now, one normal-speed pop is worth 30 hammers. I guess even the epic speed person is now worth 45 instead of the (erroneous) 44.

Thanks, that's great news.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Great
Are Hammers confirmed to be two decimal places as well (eliminating the last bit of True Micromanagement in civ)?