Production overflow

[SexyDude76]

Does production overflow from the previous n turns get accumulated into the current one, or just the overflow from the previous turn?

 

[DanF5771]

Overflow hammers are limited to the maximum of (hammer cost of current item, base hammers of city). Excess overflow hammers will be converted to gold. This check and the conditional conversion is done after each turn. So accumulating a huge pile of overflow hammers by finishing items you previously build till one turn of completion and then switching to a Wonder for a nice head start doesn't work (thankfully).

 

[Pook]

Thanks, DanF5771. I wondered how that worked. I've had situations where a city was putting out 70+ hammers and needed to build some cheaper units. I wondered "What happened to the overflow?"

 

[Bushface]

Yes indeed, what happened to the overflow ?
I saved, hit end-of-turn, and saw my treasury rise from 5427 to 5653 gold: gold-per-turn was 52 and I got 30 from privateers.
Then I reloaded the save, and "inserted" production of a Missionary (cost only 40 hammers) in a city which had just done its first turn of building the Pentagon - which would take another 3 turns. The city has a base production of 102 hammers, plus 150% from forge, factory and Ironworks (no power yet; waiting for a hydro plant), and another +50% for Wonder-building: total production 255 for a non-wonder, and an overflow of 215. The result of training the missionary was an overflow of 86, which is neither the cost of the last production nor the base production, and the treasury became 5653 as it did without doing the missionary.
I conclude that DanF is wrong, this time, both about the amount of capping and the conversion to gold.
But there is another conclusion. The effect of the overflow of 86 was that the Pentagon would now be completed in another 2 turns, that is in the same turn as without training the missionary. Effectively, a free missionary. I do not, however, propose to test creating other units possible in one turn, to see what overflow occurs and what its limit is to complete the Wonder in a further 2 turns.

 

[DanF5771]

You are looking at the "dirty" overflow Bushface. All production modifiers are removed before the calculation and conditional limitation of the hammers that are carried over to the next turn as "clean" overflow hammers.

Let's see:
Your city has 102 base hammers.
Production modifiers +150% for building a Missionary of 40 hammers --> 102*2.5 = 255 hammers.

"dirty" overflow = 255 - 40 = 215
"clean" overflow = 215/2.5 = 86 < 102 (base hammers) --> overflow is not capped, no conversion to gold

 

[Ericino]

What happens when you have a repeating production of, for example, tanks, and your city produces more than the required # of hammers?
The surplus hammers go into the next tank, but at some point, you'll have enough hammers to produce 2 tanks. Will you actually get 2 tanks at that point? Or will you keep building your surplus, even though it has surpassed the required # of hammers for a tank?

 

[DanF5771]

Only 1 Tank per city and turn. Your surplus hammers are the above mentioned overflow hammers which partially get converted to gold when they surpass the max-overflow-threshold. This will most certainly be the city's base hammers (the raw hammers you get from the worked tiles, settled GPs, assigned specialists, corporations without applying any production modifiers) in your example since Tanks are 180 hammers on normal speed.

 

[Ericino]

Only 1 Tank per city and turn. Your surplus hammers are the above mentioned overflow hammers which partially get converted to gold when they surpass the max-overflow-threshold. This will most certainly be the city's base hammers (the raw hammers you get from the worked tiles, settled GPs, assigned specialists, corporations without applying any production modifiers) in your example since Tanks are 180 hammers on normal speed.

Ah, right, I suppose I didn't read your previous post properly
Thanks!

 

[Bushface]

DanF5771 - re post #5. So actually any production modifiers are applied to reduce the "dirty" overflow, not just removed. What a pity. But anyway, I now know what happens, and thanks for the clarification.

 

[Indiansmoke]

Overflow hammers are limited to the maximum of (hammer cost of current item, base hammers of city). Excess overflow hammers will be converted to gold. This check and the conditional conversion is done after each turn. So accumulating a huge pile of overflow hammers by finishing items you previously build till one turn of completion and then switching to a Wonder for a nice head start doesn't work (thankfully).

I think this is wrong, you can accumulate large number of hammers by using build research or gold in between.

So you get lets say 3 buildings from 1 turn to completion, slave the first, finish it, build research for 1 turn, slave second finish it etc...

It is just not very usefull in practice as propably you would rather have the buildings or units sooner and of course you need slavery and lots of food.

 

[DanF5771]

Building Wealth or Research does not circumvent the described limitation of the overflow hammers. All it allows is to "park" these hammers decay free while regrowing your city to be ready for another whip.
The last overflow which you want to put into a Wonder is thus limited to the hammer cost of the last unit/building. So if you succeed in micromanaging this exploit by building/whipping something like Barracks(50)->Aqueduct(100)->Market(150) --> Wonder, congratulations . But be aware of hammer decay!

 

[Solomwi]

DanF5771 - re post #5. So actually any production modifiers are applied to reduce the "dirty" overflow, not just removed. What a pity. But anyway, I now know what happens, and thanks for the clarification.

To reduce it back to base hammers, in effect. For both overflow and the turn's actual production, the hammers from modifiers "follow" their respective base hammers. For instance, if you're producing 20 hammers with a 25% bonus, and your build requires 15 more hammers, you'll actually put 12 base hammers and 3 modifier hammers into the build, and 8 base/2 modified into the dirty overflow. All that happens with the reduction is that the modifier hammers are removed, "cleaning" the base hammers so they can be put back through whatever modifiers are in effect your next turn (in your case, the 86 hammer overflow will be modified by +200% if you go back to the Pentagon, for 258 effective hammers from overflow). So it's not that bad a deal after all. I'd venture to say in most cases, it's a wash, since your modifier will usually be the same from one build to the next. That is, the overflow is cleaned, then modified when it goes back through the next turn, by the same factor. Changing factors from one build to the next is something to be aware of and plan for, though.

Notice that this means you're producing 564 hammers for the Pentagon the turn after you built your missionary, which is why it finishes in the same turn as without the missionary.