Request Thread: Hammer Econ Tutorial

[Iranon]

That quote from UnconqueredSun Crusher1 brought up was from a thread that evaluated towns as a means of production via rush-buying - sort of the opposite of a hammer economy... and depending on how you look at it it's either hyperbole or simply wrong (if anyone wants me to back this up, I will... but I'm not sure that belongs here).

When we're using hammer to build research/wealth directly, it gets a lot worse because the final conversion rate is now 1:1 rather than 1:2 in favour of hammers.
Cities will have enough incidental commerce from things like rivers and trade routes that building at least one type of multiplier bulding will be attractive anyway. Production multipliers come late and cause health issues.

I'm mostly with KaytieKat... I love my hammers dearly, but building wealth/science with them seems a waste most of the time; I'd rather go overboard with infrastructure.
- Devoting a lot of your citizens to production that you are intending to use as such != a hammer economy. That's something one will do with every economic approach if you need the hammers for an army or adequate expansion.

***

Also:

Overflow tricks with discounted items or failure cash for wonders are special cases in that one will often get sizable bonuses on top of what we'd get if we're building gold directly. Especially in the early game where hammer multipliers are actually easier to come by than commerce multipliers, this can definitely be quite powerful.

 

[MkLh]

1st 2 are of a CE with every civic, tech, and building modifiers. Slider is at 0% then builds 10 turns of wealth. Then I start rush buying for the next 11 turns with slider still at 0%. After 21 (at 20 every unit was at 1 turn so I went one more) turns the CE produces 72 units, more than I had expected. Rush buy is strong. OK, it's not 2-1 ^^.

Next 2 are of a HE without a coal plant. We are at 85% modifiers with PS, Buildings, and Civics. In 22 turns (I went 1 extra because every city was 1 unit away while at 21 turns the CE was 3 turns away) the HE produces 114 units. So a HE without all its modifiers still produces units 33-40% quicker. I'd still always make the argument that a HE will always have modifying buildings many times faster pushing its production advantage even further ahead.

Did you remember to take the rushing penalty away? You need to build an unit for one turn before rush buying it, otherwise it's much more expensive.

 

[Crusher1]

@ Iranon

First off, glad to see your posting ^^. You are one of my favorites to read, always very strong, correct thoughts. I used the Un Sun post because he is a great player who abuses the HE, and on Deity!, although he is obviously biased to them, just like Dave is biased to cottages.

Mklh -

I didn't take away the rushing penality because it would cut the CE production by 50%. That would only give them 40 units giving the HE 3X more production. Saving gold for queing a unit for 1 turn would never help a CE catch up, it would only save them money.

The only time a CE has the advantage would be in Rush buying ICBM's because like Iranon said, they get have a great advantage when building wealth. A CE produces roughly 3 gold to a HE 1 during wealth. A CE produces roughly 2 beakers to a HE 1 beaker when building research. A HE and CE will reach Communism and Democracy at a similar and comparable time. The question then becomes how many Towns and how many building modifiers does a CE actually have to this point. Then there's still the issue of new cities and growth vs new cities and up and running.

All I know is some great players use both methods with terrific success.

 

[Iranon]

Thanks for the kind words. I hope my post didn't come across harsher than intended - I certainly don't play in the same league as UnconqueredSun. Maybe I should <gasp!> spend more time honing my instincts instead of crunching numbers...

I can see the appeal of a hammer economy. Especially on Deity, the ability to switch your output effortlessly and to stockpile whip overflow / chop hammers in the early game might compensate for the relatively low yields. After all, the environment is a lot more volatile so flexibility is good.

Using this in combination with some blatant overflow/compensation money abuse is decidedly delicious (while possible with regular economies as well, one might be reluctant to spend precious production on gold/science when one can't crank it up at will later).

Even without the dirty tricks, channeling your whole output into research to unlock something cool, then getting it in numbers almost instantly is also good... comparable to whipping scientists into new toys and not dependent on Representation for long-term use.

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With regard to rushbuying: The penalty for instant rushing isn't too relevant in my opinion. If we want to use it mostly for units, I'd like to suggest my catch-all-solution for almost everything: Filler cities. Rushbuy doesn't care if the cities ordering the delivery have horrible multipliers, it just needs a letterbox.

 

[popejubal]

I didn't take away the rushing penality because it would cut the CE production by 50%. That would only give them 40 units giving the HE 3X more production. Saving gold for queing a unit for 1 turn would never help a CE catch up, it would only save them money.

Found a couple more cities and that problem goes away. Even if they're garbage cities, you just need to build a barracks and you suddenly can crank out troops 33% faster because you can now avoid the 50% penalty. That seems worth the cost of a settler to me.

Seriously, what empire has enough cash to buy a unit in every city every turn? Take out the penalty and make it a real comparison. Besides, the time when rush buying with cash is at its best is when you get to direct your entire empire's commerce into the tremendous multipliers from Iron Works or Heroic Epic. Getting to put that extra +100% into your equation helps quite a bit and buying Wonders doesn't face nearly the same penalty when you consider that you get to direct every piece of your empire's commerce through those extra bonus multipliers.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

Overflow tricks merit their own thread

I'm following the Hammer Economy succession game to see how well they cope without the +1 food from SP. In my opinion the best way to research techs for HE is to do a classic Liberalism beeline and continue to Communism, adopting HE civics about 1000 AD. The Liberalism -> SciMeth line favors bulbing, so at least one good GP farm is a must, cottaging is fine, especially in the capital, as long as the GP farm is secured early enough.

HE serves best an expanding empire. Any new cities can develop fast without burdening the core cities, any captured irrigated cities can be converted to hammers, and any captured towned cities are kept as they are, skipping bothering with Emancipation. Taxing the core to rushbuy basic infrastructure in new cities can be profitable in the long term of a closed system, but CIV is not a closed system, i.e. failing behind in tech will often lose you trading opportunities too.

Contrary to some opinions, HE is also good for EE, because the EE buildings produce their own "commerce". In BOTM 10 I had 1k EE/turn with zero slider assigned. All in all, HE is a good mix for other economy types, the only principle civic clash with CE is caste/emancipation, in fact Universal Suffrage is more a hammer civic than Police State ever was. There are no principle civic clashes between HE and SE, despite the latter can usually gain more from environmentalism.

HE is more at odds with Corps. My answer is: switch to Corps as soon as they can feed you in place of SP. So, once you had secured a good food Corps, go for it. I was going to do that in BOTM 10 but hit the domination limit, and I did it way back in Justinian's University which had a HE phase.



The real barrier to HE is more a psychological one. Many players are not used to building wealth/science at all, or even culture for the key one hundred mark. Instead they spam fairly useless buildings/wonders and forgo their windows of opportunity. I've seen it in SP, I've seen it in MP.

 

[Yeosol]

The one thing I dont like about the HE is that it's wierd. From purly a "civ as a game" approach I think the HE can be powerful. However it's wierd. How exactly do you "build" research? It doesnt make sence. I play civ mostly for fun and running a HE really brings out the "GAME" aspect of civ and takes away from the imersion of running an empire. However from a technical min/maxing approach it seems like the HE could certianly work.

It's a little odd no one has run a demo game on it. Or maybe a game where we all try a HE off the same start/save.

 

[Crusher1]

Here is a repost of a game I played using a HE with Mehemmed which some one else started.

Spoiler :

Although I am a steady Immortal player I think it is bad manners to play different settings than the OP set forth . After all, what if a Monarch player is trying to learn how to get better and everyone plays on Emperor +. Not very helpful, LoL!

Hammer Economy, Gogogogogo Hammers, Yay!


Monarch/Epic

Spoiler :

Tech Path:

Food techs, military, myst, pottery, writing, alphabet, currency, med, priest, monarchy, asthetics to literature, COL (traded), Philo (traded) CS, Paper (bulb), Education (bulb half), MC (+1 workshops), Machinery (Engineer Prereq and PP prereq), Liberalism.

Picked PP as free tech (prereq for RP and its more expensive than GP), Engineering (Chem prereq), Feudalism (traded), Guilds (+1 work shops), gunpowder (Chem prereq). Used 2 scientist to bulb Chemistry (+1 work shops) and immediately used 2 more scientist to bulb scientific method. Immediately started researching Communism. As I was researching communism I got 1 more GS and used him on Biology. Started banking and got another GS who was used on Biology, which I then finished, went back to Banking, RP (we already picked PP free tech), Rifling, Steam power, Assembly line.

I have 9X more production than 2nd place. Long live the HE. If you look at my research rate/gpt you'll notice I'm not having any problems researching expensive techs - speed is Epic.

Yes, I am work shopping over the cottages. A HE produces more units than gold + rush buying + Kremlin (i've already posted some screen shots in the HE help thread in regards to this, of course rush buying Nukes is > all) I had 22 workers with 10 cities and 30 workers with 15+ cities. Every city conquered had 10+ workshops, a forge, and a factory very quickly. Smaller cities also received a coal plant because they didnt have to worry about health. A tiny little city working 7 tiles with a forge, factory, and coal plant can produce 60 Hammers a turn on normal speed, or 1 Infantry every 2 turns.

Take out the penalty and make it a real comparison. Besides, the time when rush buying with cash is at its best is when you get to direct your entire empire's commerce into the tremendous multipliers from Iron Works or Heroic Epic

How would this help a CE catch up? The more cities you bring into the equation the further behind a CE gets. This is because a HE only needs to work 7 tiles at stagnating food to produce 60 hammers/research on normal speed with a forge, factory, and coal plant (small cities don't need to worry about health issues). So while the CE produces filler cities to enhance their production via rush buy those cities have a hard time paying for themselves and even then will be limited by gold. A HE filler city is already a powerhouse. In other words, spamming smaller filler cities will always benefit a HE. Imo, a HE should settle 2-3x as many cities, crowed together because they are so efficient with very few tiles and lead to massive amounts of production.