Situational vs. Extensive Whipping in BtS

[futurehermit]

Ok, I'm wondering what other people's experience is of the whip in BtS.

I'm going to begin by differentiating between situational vs. extensive whipping:

Situational whipping happens in a few situations. E.g., early in the game, before you get HR and you exceed the cap, you whip away the Another e.g., is when you have a high-food, but low-production city and you need to produce something that is fairly expensive: grow, grow, grow, then...whip!

Extensive whipping, however, is when you plan your strategy out around having high-food cities that will whip a LOT to produce the majority of whatever it is that you are producing. This approach generally goes hand-in-hand with running a SE and warmongering. E.g., you are playing as Montezuma and want to get the most out of his UB (Sacrificial Alter: 1/2s from whipping).

I'm mainly interested in people's experience of the latter. I understand situational whipping and use it effectively and it is good, no doubt.

However, in my BtS games, I am finding that my games go much, much better if, after HR, I focus predominantly on growing and specializing my cities. In other words, running a CE with a gpfarm and a few production cities. Basically, just ensure good city placement, specialize some production cities that build troops non-stop, a gpfarm that takes care of my great people needs, and then a bunch of cottage-filled beaker-producers.

I've tried Monty a few times and have tried games where I whip like crazy. They usually go like this: I can win any and all wars and no one can really out-produce me. My tech falls behind, but I can easily keep at parity through tech-trading and infiltrating any Great Spies I get. Basically, I feel like I can win these games. However, I feel like my games where I focus on out-teching then stomping with superior units (cav/tanks) go much more smoothly and I feel more in control the whole time.

Perhaps it depends on difficulty level. I play on Monarch usually and perhaps extensive whipping is still important at high levels immortal/deity. Perhaps it depends on playstyle--which is what I'm really looking at here.

Thoughts?

 

[Refar]

I played a Monhy game where i whiped extensively (Monarch as well). Whiped Altars, then whipped some cheap buildings, then Whippend Troops for Conquest (Those Jaguars are unbelievable Crappy btw. i should have whipped more axes) and whipped troops for overflow for expensive buildings...

It was fun. I think on a Pangaea type map it might have been all i need for a win. But it wasn't pangaea, and once no one was left to conquer nearbye, i found myself in a very deep econimic hole.

From that experience i think extensive whipping can go well until somewehre in the early medieval age. After that you need popuation to fuel your economy. Whipping at high Happy cap becomes inefficient, and you cant afford to keep many of your cities at low population levels where whipping is really good.

 

[madscientist]

The RPC: MONTY the Mad Scientist I extensively used the whip until democracy. No cottages and built only farms/workshops/watermills. Used a SE, so with a high emphasis on food whipping was not that big a deal. I rarely approached the happy cap throughout the game, so I really don't think the 1/2 unhappy penalty was an issue, although the cheaper alters were a bonus.

 

[AlessioCerci]

After hereditary rule becomes available i like to grow my cities as large as possible. Plus the slave revolt is so annoying and it seems to happen to me every game. I like to use extensive whipping (and drafting) in my food rich globe theatre city however.

 

[vicawoo]

You shouldn't whip cottage cities, in general. But you have more than one city, so if you keep a few dedicated to research, your economy won't tank. Production cities, you may not have so many mines, so the extra food from whipping can help more than working a workshop grassland.

Sacrificial altar is amazing, if you have food. So if you've followed one of the posts on whipping, the problem is that you should only be whipping once every ten turns, and early units won't take more than a 2 population whip. Sacrificial altar lets you whip twice as much, so food rich lands suddenly become production powerhouses.

I still like jaguars, their only problem is that they are poor pillagers.

 

[Refar]

You shouldn't whip cottage cities, in general. But you have more than one city, so if you keep a few dedicated to research, your economy won't tank. Production cities, you may not have so many mines, so the extra food from whipping can help more than working a workshop grassland.

Thats good, but that i call situational whipping

 

[popejubal]

When all of your cities (and all of your opponents cities) are not producing a whole lot of hammers, but still have quick regrowth rates, there's not much that can beat the efficiency of whipping in a city with relatively low (6-ish or less) population and a food resource.

Later in the game your empire is so vast that new individual cities do not contribute a whole lot to your empire, but they still take a lot of time and micromanagement to become self sufficient. When your big cities are producing lots and your tiny cities are in need of culture, troops and buildings, I find that using Universal Sufferage to allow my big cities to do the producing for my little cities is much more effective even though it is not as efficient.

In this case (late game empire supporting infant cities), whipping is still the most efficient way to go on a pure hammer/gold/food basis for the individual cities taken together in aggregate, but in that part of the game, I'm often founding cities for strategic reasons rather than just trying to grow the size of my empire. If I have the cash, I might very well rush a couple of cultural buildings and I've even rushed the Hermitage with cash (a LOT of cash) when I wanted to steal an important resource on the edge of an opposing empire so that I can start building a particular unit. The nice thing that goes with this is that I now have a well cultured beachhead from which to launch my invasion after I nab that resource.

Whipping grows your empire when it is small. The good rate of return on your food drops away when you get to higher populations since you get a set number of hammers per person killed while the number of food points needed to produce that food increase sharply at higher populations while the surplus food per turn often drops at that higher population level.

At that point, slavery is still useful if you need something in a hurry, but it is mostly at the edges of my empire that I find myself whipping. That's one of the reasons why I like Spiritual. As long as there is land to be settled, Slavery will be useful. Whip your empire's fringes for 5 turns and then spend 20 in another civic to let the core of your empire gain the benefit from that other civic.

 

[lilnev]

BtS rewards delayed warfare much more than Warlords did. Establish your empire, grow your cities, get a tech advantage, before declaring. Whipping is much less effective with size 8 cities having to give up 3 pop for a maceman, and it gets even worse thereafter. I still whip extensively for axes/swords/catapults if the game calls for war in that era, it's just a lot less frequent these days.

 

[futurehermit]

BtS rewards delayed warfare much more than Warlords did. Establish your empire, grow your cities, get a tech advantage, before declaring. Whipping is much less effective with size 8 cities having to give up 3 pop for a maceman, and it gets even worse thereafter. I still whip extensively for axes/swords/catapults if the game calls for war in that era, it's just a lot less frequent these days.

Ok, that is pretty much exactly my experience as well, so it's nice to hear it echoed back at me by a good player

 

[Monkeyfinger]

I play on Emperor.

I don't even bother with slavery anymore unless I am spiritual, in which case I do 5 turn Theocracy/Slavery bursts where certain cities whip a ton of troops, and maybe some food rich, hammer/forest poor cities whip some infrastructure.

Aside from that? Medium upkeep, guaranteed to cost a turn to switch to, almost guaranteed to cost your capital multiple turns and pop points due to slave revolts, all for poprushing which I'd rarely use. Screw that.

 

[madscientist]

Regarding slavery in general in BTS, I pretty much agree with Monkeyfinger. I thought the OP dealt primarily with Montezuma hnece the post I made.

To me slavery in BTS had two major drawbacks compared with vanilla/warlords; upkeep costs and the annoying slave revolts (to me these should not occur unless you actually used the whip, meaning you can run the slavery civic but if you do not whip you get no revolts). In addition, the alternative is chiefly caste system which has gotten beefed up in BTS, you get +1 hammers to workshops. Also upkeep is now the same as slavery.

To be honest I use the whip alot less in BTS than warlords/vanilla. Playing marathon speed, typically monarch difficulty.

 

[MyOtherName]

I've tried Monty a few times and have tried games where I whip like crazy. They usually go like this: I can win any and all wars and no one can really out-produce me. My tech falls behind, but I can easily keep at parity through tech-trading and infiltrating any Great Spies I get. Basically, I feel like I can win these games. However, I feel like my games where I focus on out-teching then stomping with superior units (cav/tanks) go much more smoothly and I feel more in control the whole time.

...

Thoughts?

It sounds like the real point is that you're more comfortable with a financial appraoch to the early game, not a production approach, and the question of "slavery versus growth" is just a red herring.

So I think this prompts two questions:
(1) Can you become accustomed to a production-oriented early game?
(2) Can you figure out how to play a financial game while using the whip for production?

 

[BurN]

Ok, I'm wondering what other people's experience is of the whip in BtS.

I'm going to begin by differentiating between situational vs. extensive whipping:

Situational whipping happens in a few situations. E.g., early in the game, before you get HR and you exceed the cap, you whip away the Another e.g., is when you have a high-food, but low-production city and you need to produce something that is fairly expensive: grow, grow, grow, then...whip!

Extensive whipping, however, is when you plan your strategy out around having high-food cities that will whip a LOT to produce the majority of whatever it is that you are producing. This approach generally goes hand-in-hand with running a SE and warmongering. E.g., you are playing as Montezuma and want to get the most out of his UB (Sacrificial Alter: 1/2s from whipping).

I'm mainly interested in people's experience of the latter. I understand situational whipping and use it effectively and it is good, no doubt.

However, in my BtS games, I am finding that my games go much, much better if, after HR, I focus predominantly on growing and specializing my cities. In other words, running a CE with a gpfarm and a few production cities. Basically, just ensure good city placement, specialize some production cities that build troops non-stop, a gpfarm that takes care of my great people needs, and then a bunch of cottage-filled beaker-producers.

I've tried Monty a few times and have tried games where I whip like crazy. They usually go like this: I can win any and all wars and no one can really out-produce me. My tech falls behind, but I can easily keep at parity through tech-trading and infiltrating any Great Spies I get. Basically, I feel like I can win these games. However, I feel like my games where I focus on out-teching then stomping with superior units (cav/tanks) go much more smoothly and I feel more in control the whole time.

Perhaps it depends on difficulty level. I play on Monarch usually and perhaps extensive whipping is still important at high levels immortal/deity. Perhaps it depends on playstyle--which is what I'm really looking at here.

Thoughts?

Quite a coincidence, I actually tried an intensive whipping game a few days ago on vanilla/emperor with Mao (phi/org). And I can find myself in your post if I compare what happened. I was slowly getting behind and more behind and more behind in techs.
I too, run a ce/se hybrid most of the time and I like to get my economy running well before going to war, which is usually with around macemen.
I think it's mainly because you can't really do a "good" SE, since you can't run caste system. And you can't cottage much either since you'd be whipping away your sience.

But to be quite honest now, I made a lot of stupid mistakes in that game, which made me smack my head and just resign. I pretty much forgot about the game until I read this thread.

So I gave it another shot yesterday. It was probably a bad idea for me to try something "new" on emperor. So this time I went for monarch with julius (exp/org), using no cottages. I won a domi victory around +-1900ad. Tbh I think his uu is pretty OP but I wanted those two traits so w/e I take that uu gladly since I had a score to settle!

I whipped as much as I could, using rep/vassalage/slavery. Till I got state property and switched to a regular SE with rep/caste/state prop/vass. Either running specialist or prod cities.
And well my experience is that it's a typical "be at war forever" strategy. I think the pyramids for rep is quite important to make this work, since you're science is low enough as it is. Also you'd probably still want to specialize your cities. A few cities running no specialists, just making units. And other cities having more specialist and infrastructure.
And it's quite possibly a valid tactic for any pre gunpowder warmongering. You can always switch to SE or CE whenever you think you grabbed enough land.

I would retry it on emperor but seriously I've had it with the micro management of constantly whipping +- 15-20 cities. This was the longest game I played (14 hours) and tbh I like to finish my games in an hour or 3-5 on normal speed.

But I think if it didn't work out for you, you should think about what you might have done wrong last game and try it again. Eventhough it's kinda mm heavy, I think it was fun to do. Good luck~

ps: I think I'll have some withdrawal problems with my next game trying not to whip too much.

 

[futurehermit]

It sounds like the real point is that you're more comfortable with a financial appraoch to the early game, not a production approach, and the question of "slavery versus growth" is just a red herring.

So I think this prompts two questions:
(1) Can you become accustomed to a production-oriented early game?
(2) Can you figure out how to play a financial game while using the whip for production?

I've played both ways and can go harder on the production if necessary. For example, I've played games where I've had Shaka close by and needed to go 90-100% on production to take him out then catch up with tech later. In those cases I've used the whip effectively and all has been well.

However, that was only for a short time/one phase of the game then back to cottaging up, etc.

I used Monty because he's the extreme example imo for basing your long-term strategy around some hard-core whipping. I wonder what it would be like to just throw your economy in the garbage and whip, whip, whip, conquer, conquer, conquer just trying to stave off striking until you come up against a tech disadvantage you can't overcome with numbers. Then switch into caste system and tech/bulb/trade your way to roughly tech parity. Rinse, repeat.

Anyone tried this?

 

[BurN]

I've played both ways and can go harder on the production if necessary. For example, I've played games where I've had Shaka close by and needed to go 90-100% on production to take him out then catch up with tech later. In those cases I've used the whip effectively and all has been well.

However, that was only for a short time/one phase of the game then back to cottaging up, etc.

I used Monty because he's the extreme example imo for basing your long-term strategy around some hard-core whipping. I wonder what it would be like to just throw your economy in the garbage and whip, whip, whip, conquer, conquer, conquer just trying to stave off striking until you come up against a tech disadvantage you can't overcome with numbers. Then switch into caste system and tech/bulb/trade your way to roughly tech parity. Rinse, repeat.

Anyone tried this?

As I posted, not with monty but julius. I don't think leader matters much, any early/mid age "decent" uu will do.

I whipped every 10 turns, every city, for 1-5 pop depending on what age we're talking.
Around more or less liberalism I was running at a deficit with research/culture on 0%. Solution, capture/raze/pillage to keep my money up.

To be honest I think going early warmongering/whip crazy isn't going to work very well for a couple of reasons:
- A lot of units dieing = unhappiness.
- Low happy cap.
- You probably want mids/gl
- You probably want some infrastructure (which ofcourse you can whip)


I tried again today, eventhough I posted I wouldn't, I couldn't resist trying it again on higher difficulty. Emperor, Balanced map, standard size, low sea, normal speed. And I think this game is pretty much won by now.
Same thing as before, got 3 cities up. Building mids and gl while the other cities whipped axes/praets, went to war after gl was finished and I've pretty much been at war the whole time. Eliminated Mansa early with axes/praets, washington declared war on me while I was mopping up mansa's remains. Eliminated washington with praets/cats while beelining cavs. And bussy with wiping Qin from this earth. He's still on longbows that poor man. But he has much better land then peter so tough luck for him.
Only got granary,barracks,forge and courthouse in most cities, except the ones where I have some specialists running where I added libraries/temples. And I'm doing the same as my previous game, whipping all cities every 10 turns.
As for civics, the same as previous game. Slavery, rep, vassalage, free relig, decentr.

Running deficit at 0% science/culture. Pillaging/conquering Qin to keep my money up. Oh wait I just see I can't even run culture lol.


Don't ask me why I'm building a market in new york, I'll cancel it next session >_>. Anyways my hammers/commerce suck ass as you can see. And still making military units in majority of my cities. (My power rating is about double to triple of other civs atm)


Two options at this stage.

- Conquer Qin and switch to SE/CE hybrid for space win.
- Keep on warring+whipping, kill Qin->Hat->Cyrus and get a domination or conquest win with cavs and gren.

Conclusion: This "tactic" is pretty nice for 24/7 warmongering. You have no happiness problems due low pop, pretty good prod and average science. Though I think it's probably best to switch to se/ce after macemen warring since buildings/units start to cost more and more pop and you're probably going to have upkeep/maint probs.

ps: I'm definately not saying this is a "good" mid/end game tactic. If you see my production, you understand. x_x
22 turns for cav in a 10 pop city. But I guess it's a decent option in early ages.

pss: I don't quite understand your plan to go warring till you're outteched. With rep and some gp's running in majority of your cities, you won't fall behind that much. I mean I've been at war/whipping the whole game and won liberalism race still. Maybe you could try on marathon speed, not me though. These games last long enough on normal already.

 

[oyzar]

The fact that you are playing romans and the game isn't even won at this point makes the game rather artificial... When you are whipping like mad you don't care about research. You are going to win soon anyways so who cares. The game above is more an example of heavily losing focus... Building infrastructure? Who cares if you get a granary and a courthouse you don't need any more... Praets praets and more praets. It is a difference between a builder trying to war and waring to win.. You guys and probably this thread is mostly about the first thing...

 

[Sjaramei]

Hmmm... i use the whip a lot early. And i use it for infrastructure during the whole early/mid game. (i even used it very heavy late game during my last game Sushi everywhere )

It is as you noticed, whip gets less useful later on, i don't run a SE, running a more hybrid approach. I think Cav's are the last unit i whip in cities for wars, mostly i get a very good production city up by that time to take care of army needs so i don't need to use the whip anymore.

Oh, and i whip cottage cities all the time , i need libraries and stuff in them. (they got horrible production )

I play Emperor/Immortal (depends how lazy game i want ), and i don't think it's a very huge difference in how much whip you need to use because of what difficulty you play. Depends more on your strategy i think, maybe it's that SE/whip thingie that have gotten a bit worse because of the lower tech pace from the AI's?

 

[obsolete]

My whipping is a little unorthodox to most peoples (what else is new).

I only do it generally in the BC years ,and in the end-game so to speak.

Early, I whip settlers now and then, and other than that, it is to shave a turn off a wonder. I don't whip ground units.

End game, I will whip out war units. Nationhood has its limit problems, and won't work on cities that don't have significant culture. So if I get a captured city that finally comes out of anarchy, on average I can get 1 marine + 1 SAM in a single turn out of it, or I can get 4 buildings, theatre/forge/library/other.

 

[BurN]

The fact that you are playing romans and the game isn't even won at this point makes the game rather artificial... When you are whipping like mad you don't care about research. You are going to win soon anyways so who cares. The game above is more an example of heavily losing focus... Building infrastructure? Who cares if you get a granary and a courthouse you don't need any more... Praets praets and more praets. It is a difference between a builder trying to war and waring to win.. You guys and probably this thread is mostly about the first thing...

Well I saw your first remark comming. Maybe you are right and I shouldn't have made some libraries to get some scientists running where I could afford it food wise. And tbh I usually never play romans, I just liked the trait. Cyrus would've been second option or maybe mao.

How much difference does adding a forge make if I have hammers available in that city? Most of my cities only have court/barracks/forge/gran atm. With maybe 3-4 cities owning a library (as you can see only 3-4 cities generating "some" science).

I just thought it was a nice and fun idea to play with. Whipping and see how far in time I could get with it before falling hopelessly behind in techs. Since I recognize myself in hermits' post.
I will never claim to be a "pro" player, I've been playing for 7-8 weeks tops and I'm still learning/trying new stuff. I gave it my best shot and if you think I messed up so be it. Maybe you would like to demonstrate your 24/7 whipping tactics. I'll be glad to learn a thing or two and maybe redo this sometime.
I don't mind criticism at all, else I wouldn't post my stuff here. But you come over rather aggressive, with some irony and sarcasm present in your post.

And yes I usually don't go to war till maces unless the land calls for it. And yes I usually don't whip much. Usually only early game, certain wonders and basic buildings in newly conquered cities.

Anyways I'll be looking forward to your future "whipping early dom/conq" game report. (hopefully )

edit: Maybe I shouldn't even post in this thread, since it's "bts" in the title.

 

[dutchfire]

I only use slavery for small new cities, to get a granary, library and courthouse quickly, if the city has a food resource.