Refining my whipping strategy

[zantan]

I have recently come back to civ, and I’m finally learning about the wonders of slavery. I just played through 1000 AD on KMOD emperor, and decided that while slavery was very helpful, I wasn’t teching fast enough. This was partly due to a continent full of chummy Hindus trading techs, but I also felt that I was whipping my cities too small, so I didn’t have a large economy. I wanted to know how large to keep my cities while whipping, and how many farms I needed before working cottages.

So I made some slavery calculations, and wanted to share them here to get some feedback. I am playing on Epic, so slavery unhappiness lasts 15 turns. I focused on 3 pop whips, since they are equivalent to the production of a modest early city (9/ turn), and since I’m assuming early focus on buildings, many of which can be built with a 3 pop whip.

I found two interesting break points where whipping 3 population was sustainable, given a constant food surplus. According to my calculations, in 15 turns a 3 pop city can grow to 6 with 4 surplus food, and a 6 pop city can grow to 9 with 5 surplus food (assuming a granary, of course). So a whipping strategy would be:

• Build enough farms in each city to constantly maintain at least 4-5 surplus food, then build cottages / special resource improvements on the remaining tiles until 6 tiles are improved.
• Whip granary ASAP, then whip forge, library, courthouse, theatre, aqueduct, for 3 pop each. Use overflow/extra hammers to build a barracks, lighthouse, monument, temples, or units as necessary.
• If at any point during this process you get enough health happiness and surplus food to build to population 9 with 5 surplus food, do that and whip 3 pop whenever you get to size 9. Food will be converted to hammers less efficiently, but you will work an extra 3 tiles, which is worth it.
• When the basic buildings are finished, start whipping 2 pop every 15 turns at the highest population level you can maintain. This requires no more than 3-4 surplus food unless you plan on growing above 12.

My takeaways here are:

• You can get a lot out of slavery with 4 food with a small city, or 5 food with a medium one, and it can be useful with 3-4 food with a large city.
• Of the 20 tiles in the BFC, only 9 will be worked for a long time, and for a while after that I may limit myself to 12.
• A city that doesn't work 0-1 tiles can regularly whip 3 pop at a reasonable size with 2-3 3 tiles or a food resource.

Any thoughts on my strategy?

 

[traius]

You're aiming for too low of an excess food cap. 4 food is is bad. Aim for 6. Don't worry about the 6 pop "sustainability." You're going to hit higher happiness over time with more luxuries (trade for them if necessary; early game they are far more useful than health resources, but the AI trades them one-for-one anyway, with the exception of ivory which it rightly also considers a strategic resource) and hereditary rule anyway. If you're constantly keeping cities at pop six, but have the happiness space for 10, there's no need to worry about whipping exactly every fifteen turns. You have happiness to spare.

As for farms, a wet corn gets you right to 6, as does pigs. While not every city can be a corn or pig city, they should _all_ have food resources, so farms should only be minimally required (other than resource capturing farms, that is).

As for the buildings, you are buildign too many (still a major problem for me too, as I like whipping markets out somewhat unnecessarily for the extra happiness to whip out more units).
Whipping granary, forge and barracks is completely fine, library is all right, theatre is mostly a waste (if worried about borders, why not units? Then you can expand yor borders more effectively :firedevil: ).

Courthouse is ok if organized or its a sac altar or a ziggurat (as they are both cheaper). Otherwise it's ignorable until very late (the pop you just used to make it would be better off working cottages as far as your slider is concerned for quite a while in turns)

Lighthouse is fine if there is a sea-food resource (whales do not count), but otherwise just ignore it unless you have lots of other food AND are financial.

Temples are garbage unless AP religion temple (if AP go right ahead and whip. It'll pay itself off eventually), or going for cultural victory.

Monuments can be made, but only very sparingly. Often they can be avoided if you place the settler slightly differently. They should never be required to get food in your BFC though; if your city is foodless without a monument, you settled incorrectly.

Always keep a couple of cities growing. 1 will be your cottage bureaucracy city. IT should be overlapping its BFC with other cities so its cottages are always being worked by some city (and then taken over by the bureau city when you get civil service). The other city is your GP farm. It should not be whipped so it can always be working as many specialists as it can. Keeping these cities unwhipped will also mean your other cities can trade with them for a few more commerce if there are no other foreign cities to trade with.

 

[zantan]

So you’re advocating a simpler approach of going for 6 surplus, and whipping for 2-3 whenever you get unhappy citizens or -2 from health, but still restricting yourself to 1 whip / 15 turns? If that’s the case, you’ll still end up whipping 2-3 fairly frequently, you’d just wait a little longer before starting. I suppose that’s fair.

I know you can whip more frequently, but I am very wary of the incremental increases in the unhapiness timer. My last game featured a captured capital with 4 food resources and an unhappiness timer of 100+ turns. It would have been scary if it wasn't building the Globe soon after, but it was a good lesson on how quickly the timer can build up.

I agree that markets are not good enough to be whipped, and you make a good point about the small savings from courthouses, but I support whipping them at least in the situation I was just in - I was on a small island, rushing for astronomy so I could invade another small island. I wanted to get all the courthouses up on my island before I started building the invasion force so I could immediately work on the forbidden palace on the second continent. I chose monuments because I was Charismatic, and theatres for the Globe.

I would also advocate keeping a solid production city at high pop, since 3 extra pop is more likely to get you the 6/9 hammers a turn you’d get from whipping, and you probably won’t have as much surplus there.

 

[Strickl3r]

As for the buildings, you are buildign too many (still a major problem for me too, as I like whipping markets out somewhat unnecessarily for the extra happiness to whip out more units).
Whipping granary, forge and barracks is completely fine, library is all right, theatre is mostly a waste (if worried about borders, why not units? Then you can expand yor borders more effectively :firedevil: ).

I'm with you on the ''you shouldn't build to many buildings'' like for example markets, but theaters can be very usefull not only for the culture. Dye can be available via trade or you got some on your own which means the ressource is worth +2
Also on higher difficulties the ais have more units which means you lose a lot more units which means war weariness can become a huge probleme and at that point theaters are your saving grace.(use culture slider) .Sometimes you also have to defy a resolution to win the game, which might have a huge impact on your happiness.

Not mentioning the globe theater, which is expensive, but might make sense once in a while.

 

[traius]

I am always of the thought that you should save whips for units as much as possible. The way that deity level players play is whipping only the big four: granaries, forges, libraries and units (with exceptions as listed above). Then you don't whip unless someone DoW's you. You just build gold or science with all those extra hammers. Then you get some critical military tech (horseback riding for early rushes, construction if you have ivory, though it can also work if you just spam cats and have a metal, or military tradition for cuirassiers), and you whip like mad. All your cities will be angry when you are done whipping (leave your cap alive though, but you can even whip down you GP farm at this point. I agree with you on the production city though, but it should have a Heroic Epic in it and it should just be building units to be upgraded if appropriate, or siege if you're not going cuirs/cav. In a weird, not often done scenario, a food-rich HE/GT city is great for whipping). Then take over a bunch of cities, and acquire new luxury resources, and then your people aren't unhappy anymore! Force your victim to capitulate, whip down the new cities, and then rinse and repeat until you own your landmass. Invade other landmasses if game is not over yet.

The key to this is tech trading frequently and properly. And remember, while you might want to keep 1 victim backwards, if you think that some other civs might swap your tech you're trying to isolate, then you may as well trade it (except you key military tech!), so at least you are the one benefiting.

Very much an aside:
If you and civ A have a tech, and civ b has a tech neither of you have, but you don't want B to have it, so you don't trade, all that happens is: A and B trade, and now B still has it, A has something you don't have, and you're the backwards civ now. So just trade to B, and then, when A and B cannot trade anymore because you gave what civ A had on Civ B away already, trade the new thing to A so you can stop future trades between them. They both end up with the same as before, but you have techs and money vs the other scenario!

 

[drewisfat]

Higher pop the city the more food it takes to regain the pop.....
Also the smaller the city the better the tiles you choose to work usually are, and the fewer improvements your workers must make.

Most of the time 2 pop whips with size 6-4 cities are the way to go (obv depending on what tiles are available for the city). When your caps raise and your workers get bored, you may want bigger cities and it can be a good idea to give up the whip for workshops.

Isolated on a small island going for fast astro seems like a very weird situation to go whip heavy....
Whipping may be overrated when people forget to value yields from extra tiles being worked, especially cottage growth. Whipping is usually in the sweet spot for a few buildings like libs / granaries / forges, but otherwise it's for unit spamming not for rapid economic growth.



On somewhat of a side note, one of the most important things that deity players manage well are resource trades. The AI thinks cows are as good as Dyes, because the AI is dumb. The ai thinks fish may be worth 12 gpt. Knowing that you should trade excess resources is easy, but often it's worth it to trade your only copy of resources for GPT or for health --> happiness.

 

[shakabrade]

Use Hereditary Rule. The units whipped can stay in the city for a while to help relieving the unhappiness. You don't need the stack formed unless you are attacking, or being attacked.
Others already mentioned a lot of valuable stuff.

Food needed for city growth is 20 + (city size)*2. That's why you want to whip at smaller sizes.
Better to ratio.
Although not working many tiles, smaller cities are cheaper to maintain and need less infra to stay healthy and happy. Not all is bad but you must find a balance between short-term and long-term goals. That's different for every game.

Have fun with K-Mod!

 

[civtilidy]

I borrow this thread a little if its ok.
Im going to try a new whip policy of whipping every city every 10th turn to only cause 1 unhappiness. I will make sure every city has a foodsurplus enough to grow in about 10 turns to keep this balance going. How does diety players manage the whip? Is it worth to whip at low sizes at the cost of growth or grow fast to work every desired tile before start whipping? (granary is always whipped right away ofc)

What do you think about the idea of tranfering this system to a drafting system after nationalism? Theoretically every city can be drafted every 10th turn and with GT-draft and 40 other cities you can theoretically produce 5 units constantly with minimum happiness penalty so economy will still be ok. Have anyone tried something like this?

 

[sinimusta]

I borrow this thread a little if its ok.
Im going to try a new whip policy of whipping every city every 10th turn to only cause 1 unhappiness. I will make sure every city has a foodsurplus enough to grow in about 10 turns to keep this balance going. How does diety players manage the whip? Is it worth to whip at low sizes at the cost of growth or grow fast to work every desired tile before start whipping? (granary is always whipped right away ofc)

What do you think about the idea of tranfering this system to a drafting system after nationalism? Theoretically every city can be drafted every 10th turn and with GT-draft and 40 other cities you can theoretically produce 5 units constantly with minimum happiness penalty so economy will still be ok. Have anyone tried something like this?

I would avoid too strict rules like "every ten turns" especially if whipping or drafting for war. The faster you get the troops the faster you beat your enemy and you can recover during the peace time. And if it's the game ending war no need to care about recovering from unhappy.

The same applies to expansion phase (and in fact almost everything): the faster the better. You don't want to lose city sites because you were waiting for the whip timer to go off.

 

[shpeka]

I borrow this thread a little if its ok.
Im going to try a new whip policy of whipping every city every 10th turn to only cause 1 unhappiness. I will make sure every city has a foodsurplus enough to grow in about 10 turns to keep this balance going. How does diety players manage the whip? Is it worth to whip at low sizes at the cost of growth or grow fast to work every desired tile before start whipping? (granary is always whipped right away ofc)

What do you think about the idea of tranfering this system to a drafting system after nationalism? Theoretically every city can be drafted every 10th turn and with GT-draft and 40 other cities you can theoretically produce 5 units constantly with minimum happiness penalty so economy will still be ok. Have anyone tried something like this?

Deity players will tell you that whip unhappiness is something negligible - with a few exceptions.

1) In the beginning of the game you have few happiness resources and no access to monarchy/representation. Be very wary of whipping unhappiness.
2) Avoid whipping for 1 pop since repeated 1 pop whips will quickly stack unhappy faces.
3) Avoid whipping in capital and heroic epic cities (national epic might be here as well). You need them big - unhappiness prevents this.

Feel free to whip all other cities. Even 100+ turns of unhappiness and 10 unhappy faces will not trouble you in a city with 3 population and +20 happiness.

Have in mind that this tactic will not harm your research potential as a good cottage capital might well contribute 80% of your research.

 

[IIHAAETTEAAHII]

i should add to that that whipping yields double hammers in the heroic epic city, thus rendering your point void unless hammers are lost through overflow.

 

[misterfilmgeek]

i should add to that that whipping yields double hammers in the heroic epic city, thus rendering your point void unless hammers are lost through overflow.

And I should add that HE/Globe is sometimes an excellent combo.

 

[shpeka]

i should add to that that whipping yields double hammers in the heroic epic city, thus rendering your point void unless hammers are lost through overflow.

My point was that a good HE city should probably build a unit per turn (or two) thus rendering whipping useless.

If you are lucky to get an early HE in a city with a lot of food - and plan on a medieval war - by all means feel free to whip it down.

 

[IIHAAETTEAAHII]

My point was that a good HE city should probably build a unit per turn (or two) thus rendering whipping useless.

oh yes, forgot about that - but you can't even whip at one turn from completion, so you should still whip every time you can

 

[fed1943]

IMO an easy way to see how whip is good in this very situation:
Whip lose pop to win hammers; so, try "to translate" pop into hammer, given the actual situation.
(Do not forget about commerce if some is envolved).