Pillage Economy

[Lemminkäinen]

I tried searching for this, but didn't find anything comprehensive.

Is it viable? I suppose it would go something like building two or three stacks of four to five Horse Archers (or other two-move troops like Impis, War Chariots or the like) and then going on a rampage next door. Or better yet, one door over so that the retribution will take a while to reach you. If you don't take cities but merely pillage the improvements you won't get the city maintenance, so you can go quite far with your pillagers.

The problem is that it would sour your diplomatic relations pretty badly if you wish to keep your economy afloat with behaviour like this. The good news is that with you plundering their resources and cottages and so on, the enemy will be rather crippled.

Naturally the first target would be copper and iron mines to negate the production of counter units like spearmen (or axemen in the case of impi). Second would be cottages that yield more gold when plundering.

So, could it work? Also, how much gold does pillaging produce?

 

[Refar]

There was a RPG Challenge game by MadScientist where he conquered the world with Ghengis Khan running the "Burn Every City" - Economy. -> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=244372

AFAIK its the only game where somthing like this was done, tho there might be some i am not aware of in the Stories and Tales and/or Successsion Games forums...

 

[absimiliard]

One problem I see with this is that all it can get you is gold.

Gold itself is of strictly limited value in my opinion.

-abs

 

[futurehermit]

When it comes time for you to conquer your opponent outright the spoils of war will be only a fraction of what they could've been.

 

[Iranon]

It's not a full economy, but systematic pillaging can be a crucial part of your economy. I like to use it for an opponent I don't plan to conquer any time soon - be it because I have grown into the ideal size for my empire and further expansion would hurt my economy or simply because he's too far away.

In that case, I'll raid them, pillaging them to hell and back, withdraw... start again as soon as they have something approaching decent infrastructure again. I love having an all-time whipping boy (or girl. I'll take what I can get). You can use triangle diplomacy to reap diplomatic benefits from your phony war (that'll accumulate no War Weariness), maybe your victim will drop so low in power that he is a decoy victim etc.

The beauty is that the situation is stable. Their economy will be in shambles, but because they're constantly at war without actual fighting they'll have enough troops to fend off other attackers. I hate it when wars I stir up actually benefit someone else - hardly a threat here.
the whole thing is also free... the little additional maintenance is paid for multiple times by the gold pillaged, and for any unit I typically lose I capture more than 1 worker.

 

[Lemminkäinen]

One problem I see with this is that all it can get you is gold.

Gold itself is of strictly limited value in my opinion.

That is true, but gold can fund deficit research. Also, since libraries and monasteries give a boost to research but not to gold, having the slider further on the science side of things gives you more bang for your buck in early going at least (until guilds, I suppose).

I wonder if lots of pillaging might also get the AI to give better goodies when asking for peace afterwards - that would speed up research in the form of free techs. But I don't know if pillaging affects the peace price or not.

When it comes time for you to conquer your opponent outright the spoils of war will be only a fraction of what they could've been.

True also, which makes pillaging someone else besides the immediate neighbour even more tempting.

 

[absimiliard]

Never said gold wasn't useful. Just said I think it is of strictly limited use.

I'm also with futurehermit, I tend to war for conquest. So pillaging tends to decrease my "winnings", if you will.

But regardless of pillaging, gold is a useful thing, but in limited ways. You still need to supply the beakers somehow. Running a higher slider isn't in itself an answer, that commerce needs to come from some sort of economy, and gold can't help you there. Gold is a booster in a way, you can use it to improve your situation, but your fundamentals still need to be in place.

-abs

 

[slaze]

Never said gold wasn't useful. Just said I think it is of strictly limited use.

Gold has more value than beakers, since gold can be turned into beakers and beakers have more hidden multipliers.

Back to the OP, I can imagine scenarios where pillaging could be beneficial, and maybe even to the point where spending the time to research Horseback Riding and pillaging Mansa's towns helps you research faster than without Horseback Riding. Imagine that, HR being an "economic" tech.

 

[Wlauzon]

There is pillaging, and there is intelligent pillaging.

In most end games, it seems the only reason to pillage cottages (assuming you are winning) is for the gold, and that is a bit shortsighted.

On the other hand, pillaging his resources, roads, and farms (which can also be rebuilt very quickly when you take over) can have a dramatic effect on their production, especially if you can take out some critical ones, like coal, aluminum, oil.

 

[madscientist]

The pillaging technique in the Khan RPC game was fueled by razing most (50 ) enemy cities, and keeping a few shrined HOLY cities.

I had a basic core of Mongol cities, The captured Sumemrian capital (which was nearby), one additional Mongol city on the other land mass for horses, and most AI capitals if they had a shrined holy city. I resettled the razed Portugese captial for access to elephants post-construction. Homelands were safefrom retaliation except the horse city although I did secure a second source. Won the game before I even teched gunpowder.

The strategy works if you keep you core cities compact, andbringing the fight to AI lands. Less cities to defend, less probelsm with retaliation. They also seamed to have a problem teching once I pillaged all the farms/cottagesmines.

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

I'm a big fan of axe rushing, and often I expand past the "comfortable" point where I can sustain a 60% science slider without a reasonable deficit. I often then turn to a convienent neighbor and pillage him like mad, to keep me afloat until my cottages develop, or my specialists get moving, and I can build courthouses everywhere.

 

[Silence101]

Gold has more value than beakers, since gold can be turned into beakers and beakers have more hidden multipliers.

Beakers come from commerce - not gold. However, gold does allow you to run deficit research spending, though in this case, your army abroad is probably a large piece of your deficit spending.

This tactic is a great supplement to a warmonger SE because your primary research isn't coming from the slider. Therefore, you can use your commerce and pillaged gold to supplement a larger army.

 

[GoodGame]

double post

 

[GoodGame]

There is a difference between gold in the treasury, and base commerce in your land though. If you could control those towns instead of pillaging, their base commerce 'slidered' to research will be more valuable than the pillaged gold used to buffer a deficit. The reason is because of local city improvements in the city that controls the town (e.g. library).

I favor pillaging for strategic purposes, and sometimes that does mean beating the heck out their cottage cities to indirectly make it easier to conquer a closer city.

Gold has more value than beakers, since gold can be turned into beakers and beakers have more hidden multipliers.

 

[absimiliard]

Gold has more value than beakers, since gold can be turned into beakers and beakers have more hidden multipliers.

How?

Pre-corporation, tell me how you can convert gold to beakers.

Don't tell me how you can raise the slider, that isn't converting gold into beakers it's converting commerce into beakers, and is utterly useless if your slider is at 100% already.

So exactly HOW can you convert the +5 Gold from a settled priest into beakers? You could buy the tech, if you've a willing AI, but the efficiency on that is so ridiculous I'm sure that's not what you're thinking of . Please show me the building, the civic, or the whatever-it-is, that can turn that gold into beakers before corporations.

Because I don't think you can.

So I stand by what I said. Gold is of value, but it is of strictly limited value.

(Having been a bit snarky on this, if you're serious and there is a strategy I'm not aware of I'd love to hear it. I'm always looking for new tricks, and turning gold into beakers would be a most excellent trick. I just don't think it's possible in a pre-corp world except by buying tech at ruinous rates from the AI, and that just plain isn't a viable strategy since even the nicest AIs rarely sell the decent techs you want.)

-abs

 

[Lemminkäinen]

If your slider is already at 100%, then it is time to expand and fast.

More likely your slider will be somewhere in the region of 60% if you're going without deficit. And if you are going with a deficit, then you are, in effect, changing gold to beakers.

If you have no gold, you have to research without deficit, which means that you will get fewer beakers. If you have gold, you can research with a deficit, which means that you will more beakers. Also, this way you will get more our of your commerce, as you will get more beakers than you would get gold out of the same amount of commerce because you have monasteries and libraries and whatnot.

 

[absimiliard]

I understand your points oh hero of the Kalevala.

However I think that still points to gold being mostly a "helper". It allows you to run a higher slider, whether deficit or not doesn't change that it allows you higher settings. It lets you make better use of the beaker boosters like libraries or monasteries. But you still need to support that slider with commerce from somewhere. In an SE style game gold is great because you can slider more happy and less gold, but you still need the specialists for the research.

I'm not in any way saying that a high focus on gold is bad idea. Nor am I saying, the even crazier, that you can ignore gold.

I think focussing your gold into a specific gold-generating city can be very valuable. I think using that city to host Wall Street later on is de rigeur. I believe in using corporations to shift gold into your Wall Street city where it gets bonuses it wouldn't get otherwise.

Heck, I'll even try the pillaging economy. I've been way too peaceful of late. All rush here, wait until privateers there, maybe a late-game war, but probably space-race for the win, and no constant war. I can use the practice. Testing out a pillaging economy should be interesting.

What I am saying is that gold only goes so far. At some point I think you need to choose an economy, most of us use city-specialized hybrids, and I don't think a Gold Economy is viable as a result.

I'll have to go try it. Alas it'll have to be tomorrow, busy until then.

-abs

 

[Draknith]

sounds to me like you want to be a pirate. I would just set up a few cities across the globe and send in pirate raiding parties to the mainland, and blockade ports with privateers. That would be an interesting game, but would be kinda anti-civilization. I guess you could always put yourself incharge of the barbarians... haha

 

[slaze]

abs-

Running the slider at deficit is the conversion and it is definately a conversion. As soon as you incur maintenence gold becomes a part of the economy and it becomes the only absolute constant; with the addition of espionage you can choose to put your commerce into science or espionage but no matter what, you'll have to pay your maintenence in gold. By having stores of gold, you can run a deficit by paying maintanence in gold stores while using your commerce for science or espionage. That's the conversion.

Let me show you this trick, as i believe it shows how gold factors into the commerce engine.

For a stagnant economy, if a tech is 12 turns away at 50% science, it is equal to run 0% science for 6 turns and 100% science for 6 turns. Even with multipliers (libraries) factored in, this is the same. (most people would intuitively think they're wasting their library by running 0% science but running a higher percentage later compensates; it is the same total research overall).

But for a growing economy (this only works when you get you first multiplier), they are not equal. Running 0% science at the beggining of a tech and then closing it out at 100% WHEN YOU HAVE GROWN NEW POP AND HAVE MORE WORKED COMMERCE TO THROW INTO YOUR MULTIPLIERS makes it optimal to run this sort of deficit research. And you couldn't do it without gold.

If you had more gold multipliers then it would be optimal to run a higher science rate earlier in a tech and a lower rate later. And if your economy was shrinking (drafting, whipping) it would also be better to run the higher science rate earlier.

But then there's another thing (i lied about some of the above, they are not equal). When you run 0% science you still get one beaker (when you run 0% gold you don't get one gold.) Because of this I've found myself researching Meditation at 0% science (56 turns away) while I stockpile enough gold to eventually run 100% gold and crash at Monarchy.

I know this doesn't improve research too much, probably on the order of 0.4-2%, but it DOES increase research and every little bit helps.

With that i stand by my original statement: Gold has more value than beakers, since gold can be turned into even more beakers.

 

[pigswill]

There is a version of this when you capture and raze the city first and then pillage all its improvements because you get the cash from pillaging if its not in your territory. Whether its a viable economy is another matter.