spoonwoods despotism

[robbus]

You are a despot producing 24 fpt... where is the despot penalty applied

I count 10gpt from tiles where does extra 3 come from, Other civs?

does despot penalty get applied only to food or to whatever is being produced most?


Thanks

 

[Simpson17866]

Wealth?

 

[Spoonwood]

You are a despot producing 24 fpt... where is the despot penalty applied

The despot penalty gets applied to the food tiles before the fpt gets calculated. So with an irrigated grassland, which would produce 3 food, it then produces 2. Then that 2 food gets added to the food per turn for the box. So, in the above screenshot the despotism penalty gets applied to the cows. To make this clearer, compare the above screenshot with this one and count the amount of food in the tile for the cow directly next to 001:

I count 10gpt from tiles where does extra 3 come from, Other civs?

No, that comes from wealth. One-quarter of 12, the number of shields per turn, is 3. I think .25 makes for the rate for shield to wealth conversion, but don't quote me on that. Wealth isn't what I actually did in the game where I got those screenshots from. I just set the city to wealth, because I wanted to use the city to grow instead of producing a worker.

 

[timerover51]

The default setting for shields to gold is 4 to 1, so 12 shields will give you three additional gold. You can check that by going to the Editor and checking on the General Settings.

 

[robbus]

ok thanks

 

[Lanzelot]

The default setting for shields to gold is 4 to 1, so 12 shields will give you three additional gold. You can check that by going to the Editor and checking on the General Settings.

When you discover the "Economics" technology, that rate gets improved to "2 to 1". (So 12 shields would then be converted to 6 additional gold.)

@robbus: to make a long explanation short: to understand the Despo penalty, just take a look at one of those irrigated cow tiles in the two screenshots. In the Despotism screenshot it provides 4 food, while in the Republic screenshot it provides 5 food.

The full definition of Despo penalty is: "Every tile that produces 3 or more food/shields/commerce, gets 1 subtracted."

Food is of course the resource, where this is most prominently felt... (It's the basic rule behind the rule of thumb "irrigate brown, mine green", as irrigating grassland ("green") has zero effect under Despotism: unimproved grassland provides 2 food, by irrigation you increase that to 3, and the Despo penalty reduces it to 2 again... The AI apparently doesn't know this: just take a look at Amsterdam in our current succession game: the Dutch have irrigated 4 grassland tiles while still in Despotism. Lots of wasted worker turns... If they had built mines instead, they would now have +4 shields -- and we wouldn't have to wait so long for "our" Lighthouse... )

But it also effects the other two resources, gold and shields. For example, the Despo penalty is the reason, why you don't mine hills under Despotism: a hill provides 1 shield, the mine increases that to 3, and the Despo penalty reduces it to 2. So the mine gives you only 1 extra shield, but it takes 12 turns to construct. You can build a mine on flatland (grassland or plains) in only 6 turns, and it also gives you 1 extra shield. So why bother with the hills...
Therefore an experienced player will first improve all the flatland tiles and only turn towards hills & mountains, if a) all flatland tiles are done and/or b) if Republic has been reached. (The exception is of course an important luxury or strategic resource that needs to be hooked up early, e.g. wine or iron on a hill or gems on a mountain, etc.)

 

[Spoonwood]

The full definition of Despo penalty is: "Every tile that produces 3 or more food/shields/commerce, gets 1 subtracted."

Food is of course the resource, where this is most prominently felt...

Your full description of the Despotism penalty reminds me that I have just as much "felt" the Despotism penalty prominently in terms of production in some 20k games. As in having an early golden age, or mined hills only producing 2 shields.

It's the basic rule behind the rule of thumb "irrigate brown, mine green"

There's more to that. Think of the golden age.

For example, the Despo penalty is the reason, why you don't mine hills under Despotism

I've mined plenty of hills in Despotism. Most of the time that's for the 20k. So, hopefully that clarifies where your statement applies.

if Republic has been reached.

I would say that Republic lies near instead of it having gotten reached.

 

[robbus]

I think I get it. I misread despot to read any food above 2 is a penalty and not 1 food above 2. So I thought despot tiles could only produce 2fpt max. I had some 3fpt files and could never figure it out....

 

[Spoonwood]

"irrigate brown, mine green"

Actually, thinking about this, I don't think Despotism doesn't actually lead so much to this rule. I mean, consider a game where you NEVER got out of Despotism, or perhaps better we had some mod with a less corrupt government than Despotism that still had the standard production penalty. Would you really want to follow "irrigate brown, mine green"? I'd argue no. You would want to follow the "mine green" part thoroughly, since irrigating grassland wouldn't do anything. But, you probably would want to mine brown to some extent to get extra shields from once a city has grown, or in cities that don't have forests nearby to get extra production upon growth.

So, Despotism more leads to the rule "mine green, think about brown."

The "mine green, irrigate brown" idea may well have just seemed nice since it gives every tile a relatively uniform amount of food and shields. I'd have to figure out who first proposed it though, and it might have even arisen elsewhere on some site which no longer exists for all I know.

 

[tjs282]

The "mine green, irrigate brown" idea may well have just seemed nice since it gives every tile a relatively uniform amount of food and shields. I'd have to figure out who first proposed it though, and it might have even arisen elsewhere on some site which no longer exists for all I know.

(I'm pretty sure) I've seen someone here on CFC advocate mining about 50% of the Plains and irrigating at least 1-2 food-bonus (B)Grass, specifically in order to end up with a mixture of tiles giving 1, 2, or 3/4 FPT and 3, 2, or 1 SPT (under Despot, and then later Monarchy/ Republic), such that whatever you need to complete a build/ growth-cycle, you should always be able to find a last-turn zero-waste micromanagement-solution. Though I have a nagging feeling that they might also have been assuming OCP, so that's maybe not so helpful...

Robbus:
One instance where the 'irrigate brown' rule doesn't usually apply, is when you have little or no 'green' to mine, e.g. Floodplain-towns -- especially at Emp+, especially under early Republic, and especially before multiple Luxes are acquired. (Irrigated) Floodplains will provide your town(s) with huge FPT and fast growth (of unhappy citizens), but irrigated Plains/ Deserts will give (far) too few SPT to be able to efficiently divert that growth into Workers/ Settlers (or anything else). In such cases, surrounding Plains/Desert therefore almost always need to be fully-mined...

 

[Lanzelot]

Yep, it depends on whether your city has enough food or not. I usually also mine some plains, once the city has hit size 12 and has more than 24 food. I even plant forests on normal (previously mined) grasslands in order to turn a 2f/1s tile into 1f/2s.
But during the start phase I think that the rule of thumb "mine green, irrigate brown" holds in 99% of the cases. You want to grow fast in the beginning, so no time for working 1f tiles, if you can avoid it. (Floodplain starts may be the exception here, as here you sometimes have "too much food" and want some production also.

For me, the early phase ends with the advent of Republic. Then you need to rethink, what you want from your tiles. In worker/settler pumps you keep the irrigation, in maxed-out cities you sooner or later convert all you can to mines. (The exception is cities, where you have lots of mountains that need all the food from other tiles they can get...)

And then the advent of Rails changes everything once again...