Powering Japan

[elmurcis]

This is more simple as there are 2 ways to look to this.
Do you choose Japan to start with? (who would do that if there are so many better starters? )
or
How you play if start as Japan? (so question isn't about if its good but what are strong sides or weak or what type of start/map/gaming style would allow to use things best)

 

[krikav]

Hmm... Trying to play devils advocate here.
Not sure why, I really hate toku. Primarily because I really hate PRO almost as much as I love my favourite trait AGG.

If we are given a start completely deprived of hammers, a lone clam, some floodplains more hammerless flatland. Perhaps we have moved settler out of reach of our starting hills...
Could perhaps be a scenario where we go pottery->mining->bw and worker first with the intent of laying down a few cottages while awaiting slavery to whip a boat?

And not really pottery first, but "pottery after BW without other detours."
If we have a rather strong seafood start, (2-3 sources), and perhaps a mining happy resource.
I think it make sense to whip a granary rather early along the lines Mining->BW->Pottery.
Since the granary effectively doubles available food, it's more powerful in cities that are already abundant of food.
A civ starting with mining+tw would probably be better of, even in this highly specific scenario too though.

 

[Bibor]

But... but... Toku has the best red borders in the game!

(At least on a full spectrum AdobeRGB monitor)

 

[Fish Man]

But... but... Toku has the best red borders in the game!

(At least on a full spectrum AdobeRGB monitor)

It even makes sense too. Red light means stop, and him not OBing with you in a million years sure as heck tells your units to "stop right there!"

 

[Bibor]

Toku: Oh, did I just block you off from other AIs? You better start working towards that Astronomy, kiddo.

 

[Powerfaker]

How you play if start as Japan? (so question isn't about if its good but what are strong sides or weak or what type of start/map/gaming style would allow to use things best)

Toku's start in the earth map scenario benefits from both fishing and wheel. You settle on the pig, build a worker that roads copper and silver. Meanwhile mining + bronze are finished. You chop+mine the resi's into some workboats Sailing/Masonry for galleys/GLH and Pottery for grans next etc. Agri/Hunt/Myst/AH useless for quite a while. Also Toku is in this scenario actually much more comfortable to play than many others, due to his quick access to silver and gold. And this scenario seems to gear him to deploy samoerai against Qin and/or Asoka/Genghis (depending on your progress)

 

[Fish Man]

Hmm... Trying to play devils advocate here.
Not sure why, I really hate toku. Primarily because I really hate PRO almost as much as I love my favourite trait AGG.

If we are given a start completely deprived of hammers, a lone clam, some floodplains more hammerless flatland. Perhaps we have moved settler out of reach of our starting hills...
Could perhaps be a scenario where we go pottery->mining->bw and worker first with the intent of laying down a few cottages while awaiting slavery to whip a boat?

And not really pottery first, but "pottery after BW without other detours."
If we have a rather strong seafood start, (2-3 sources), and perhaps a mining happy resource.
I think it make sense to whip a granary rather early along the lines Mining->BW->Pottery.
Since the granary effectively doubles available food, it's more powerful in cities that are already abundant of food.
A civ starting with mining+tw would probably be better of, even in this highly specific scenario too though.

I would actually somewhat disagree with what you said. I learned from @sampsa that in games with an extreme overabundance of food and low happy cap, granary is relatively useless at least for a bit. Your city regrows so fast that the difference between regrowing into happy cap with or without is basically 2-3 turns, if not less, and any after that is mostly worthless. A worker whipped for the same cost might be a much better investment instead.

 

[krikav]

Not sure what situation sampsa was talking about, but theory should be kind of clear.
Every food that your city harvests is doubled by the granary.
If you have a city that harvests more food, the granary will double more.

Ofcourse the happycap issue does force you to at some point stop whipping and let city cool of whip anger.
Say we have double pigs or something other yummy. Even with no happy resources at all, you can first whip the granary, then go on and do 3-4 whips in rapid succession and leave your capital in a sorry state cooling of 30-40 turns of whip anger.
Perhaps you have whipped settlers which can then take the tiles your capital now no longer needs.
Alot of options open up, if we see the happy cap more like a guideline instead of a firm limit.

 

[Bibor]

If there’s one thing I learned about this game is that nothing is “clear”. *looks at deity BC launch thread*

 

[sampsa]

Probably my comment was made on that Willem emperor game. Start with lots of food and grass FIN riverside cottages. At least in such conditions, not hurrying with granaries to work max amount of strong cottages is the way to go. Just stagnate building settlers/workers at -cap and whip granaries when closer to monarchy or rep via Mids.

 

[Fish Man]

Not sure what situation sampsa was talking about, but theory should be kind of clear.
Every food that your city harvests is doubled by the granary.
If you have a city that harvests more food, the granary will double more.

Ofcourse the happycap issue does force you to at some point stop whipping and let city cool of whip anger.
Say we have double pigs or something other yummy. Even with no happy resources at all, you can first whip the granary, then go on and do 3-4 whips in rapid succession and leave your capital in a sorry state cooling of 30-40 turns of whip anger.
Perhaps you have whipped settlers which can then take the tiles your capital now no longer needs.
Alot of options open up, if we see the happy cap more like a guideline instead of a firm limit.

Yeah, basically what @sampsa said is true. Capital with 30-40 turns of whip anger...if it's a start in the middle of just dry grassland with a corn and a cow, then sure, there's nothing good to work anyways. But with stuff like fin riverside cottages...that's a mega yikes. You're easily missing 10 commerce/turn with that much anger, and the gap only gets worse as the cottages that would've developed over time go unworked and unmatured.

 

[krikav]

It depends on what you whipped.
If you whipped 3 settlers that are now allowed to grow cities on your capitals food sources (it doesn't need them during the cooloff period), or claim new food sources nearby, the number of tiles you are working might increase in total, only at the expense of the capital.
In the WvO game, the strategy was more or less to grow the cities to happycap and only work cottages, and in such a situation a granary is rather pointless as the city isn't growing.

Practical considerations always trumps theory, and also the granary is so good that it's hard to root out where it might be better or worse, but the numbers does't lie;
The more food a city harvests, the better return you get for your granary. That is, turns spent working food tiles and not being busy building settlers/workers, as the city stagnate the turns it does.

 

[sampsa]

I am not sure if there is a disagreement or not.

In the WvO game, the strategy was more or less to grow the cities to happycap and only work cottages, and in such a situation a granary is rather pointless as the city isn't growing.

Why was that the strategy? Because it was good?

Practical considerations always trumps theory, and also the granary is so good that it's hard to root out where it might be better or worse, but the numbers does't lie;
The more food a city harvests, the better return you get for your granary. That is, turns spent working food tiles and not being busy building settlers/workers, as the city stagnate the turns it does.

This is certainly true, but also working cottages is good... Being at higher size in general is good, assuming you are working quality tiles. Even though building a granary and whipping wins quite a lot of , sometimes the bottleneck is .

 

[krikav]

I don't think there is any disagreement. At least it isn't obvious if it is.
Straying far away from the original topic, but most discussions tend to end up around granaries and whipping it seems, so why not just continue!

A city which has too little food to do any whipping, is in my view a primary candidate for a city that will build it's granary late, if ever.
This is because I would get so little return on the investment.
Growing from pop2 to pop8 costs you 150 food, 75 food if you have a granary. If the city won't ever be whipped, it will stay at about that size until midgame or later.
So if you invested 60H on a granary at pop2 you traded 60H for a return of 75Food. (Abit more since you will reach higher pop faster and thus be able to work more tiles.)
If you on the other hand plan to grow from pop2 to pop8 but first do 4 3pop whips from pop6 to pop3 during the same period, that same investment of 60H will save you 201F instead.

The situation is complicated abit by the fact that such low-food cites tend to be more hammer heavy, and they need to have something to build while growing, so they usually end up building a granary anyway.