shyuhe
Deity
I'll settle for marble because it makes the GL, Parthenon, and Taj all cheaper. I won't settle for stone since the only wonder I use it for is Oxford.
Stone & Marble
- Thread starter Gwaja
- Start date
I agree marble is the preferable of the two.
But with some coastal cities stone becomes extra good for fail gold cheese because of the Maoi Statues. The MS are available almost from the start of the game, don't require a race to build (national wonder) and unlike the other national wonders are something that it doesn't really matter if they're delayed a few turns.
If I have a couple of spare coastal cities I always try to put a few whip overflows in before completing the statues, and especially with stone. Whip overflow of 29 hammers plus 2x the regular city output, all with +100% easily tops 100 a turn. Delaying a soso wonder for say 4 turns for 400+ gold is well worth the micro IMO.
But with some coastal cities stone becomes extra good for fail gold cheese because of the Maoi Statues. The MS are available almost from the start of the game, don't require a race to build (national wonder) and unlike the other national wonders are something that it doesn't really matter if they're delayed a few turns.
If I have a couple of spare coastal cities I always try to put a few whip overflows in before completing the statues, and especially with stone. Whip overflow of 29 hammers plus 2x the regular city output, all with +100% easily tops 100 a turn. Delaying a soso wonder for say 4 turns for 400+ gold is well worth the micro IMO.
Stone can be used for building walls and castles. With whip-overflow trick (whip at 1 turn before wall/castle finishes) you can get an easy 50+ hammers boost to the next item.
Dhoomstriker
Girlie Builder
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- Aug 12, 2006
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Given how overflow Hammers are capped, you are very likely losing out by using this tactic.
Let's say that your Wall costs you 50 Hammers. If you do not have a Forge in that City and if you do not have Organized Religion in that City, then at most 50 / (1 + 1) = 50 / 2 = 25 based Hammers can overflow.
Now, it's tricky, since the display doesn't show base Hammers but shows Stone-augmented Hammers, but if you make your next build item one that does not have a production bonus (say, a Granary for a non-Expansionist Civ), then you'll see the base Hammer value of overflowed Hammers.
If whipping produces 30 Hammers and if your City generates 15 base Hammers on its own, then you're making 45 base Hammers... part of which will go to completing the Wall, part of which (25 base Hammers) will overflow, while the rest will be lost.
Now, if you are playing with BUG + BULL, those lost Hammers become Gold, but you aren't really gaining in production that way. If you're playing without Mods, I understand that
If you also have a Forge and have your State Religion in the City under Organized Religion, then a maximum of 50 / (1 + 1 + .25 + .25) = 50 / 2.5 = 20 base Hammers will overflow... so you'd better not be "almost complete" that Wall when you whip a population point for an additional 30 base Hammers, since you might be throwing away Hammer production to the wind.
A_Hamster
Small Furry Animal
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2007
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- 627
Is there a formula one can use to calculate the cap?
(This is the sort of data which will probably get me to download BUG. I've used it in some other mods: I just don't relish the thought of merging it with my own mod.)
Dhoomstriker
Girlie Builder
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 13,474
If you have no production bonuses, then you can overflow an equal amount of Hammers as the cost of the item that you completed (not the new build item that you will build next).
So, if you are building a Wall that costs 50 Hammers, then the maximum amount of overflow Hammers will be 50 Hammers.
However, production bonuses play havoc on this value, in that production bonuses actually reduce the amount of Hammers that can overflow.
Let 100% be the value that represents your Base Hammers
You get an extra + 100% for having the corresponding Resource (Marble, Stone, Copper, Gold, Ivory, Aluminum, etc)
You get an extra + 25% for having a Forge
You get an extra +25% for running the Organized Religion Civic while having your State Religion in the City
You can simply add up all of these values (remember to always "count" the 100% for base Hammers). Then, take the cost of the build item, divide it by your percentage total, and multiply by 100 (to get rid of the percentage).
So, say we have Stone and a Forge, but we don't have our State Religion in the City, so it doesn't matter which Religious Civic you are running.
100% base Hammers + 100% for having Stone + 25% for having the Forge = 100 + 100 + 25 = 225
50 Hammers to build the Wall (going from memory here... the actual number might be different in the game) / 225 * 100
= 0.2222222222222222 / 100
= 22.2222222222222
Here, the game is "mean" in that it doesn't allow you to overflow partial Hammers, so we round down to 22 base Hammers.
If you make more than 22 base Hammers than will be required to complete the Wall, then those Hammers will not overflow.
Before we go too much further, I would like to say that working with percentages and having to decide whether to divide by 100 or multiply by 100 can get confusing. So, I prefer to immediately convert the percentage values.
So, rather than saying that base Hammers = 100%, I say that base Hammers = 1.0
Similarly, a Resource bonus = + 1.0
and a Forge bonus = + 0.25
So, our production bonus is 1.0 + 1.0 + 0.25 = 2.25... it's easier to understand the percentages, since the game presents the info using percentages, but the math gets easier if you convert the numbers into decimal values.
Since I don't have the game open in front of me, the following part could very well be wrong, but I believe that the game shows the amount of production-enhanced Hammers will be going into the Wall, not the amount of base Hammers that will be going into the Wall. However, you should be able to see the "base Hammers" by hoving your mouse over the Hammer icon to the left of the production bar. The problem is that this value in isolation won't really help you to figure out whether or not you are going to lose Hammers due to capping of overflow Hammers.
First, you will have to take the amount of Hammers required to complete the build item. Let's say that you have 28 out of 50 Hammers invested into the Wall from last turn (or from multiple previous turns).
Let's say that the City produced 13 base Hammers (1 from the City Centre, and 4 Hammers each from 3 different Plains Hills Mines, just to keep the numbers easy to visualize).
You will take the production bonus that we calculated above (1.0 + 1.0 + 0.25 = 2.25) and multiply it against the number of base Hammers... 13 * 2.25 / = 29.25 production-enhanced Hammers.
Since we only need 50 - 28 = 22 Hammers and we are going to make 29.25 Hammers, we will complete the Wall this turn and will have a certain amount of overflow Hammers.
But how many overflow Hammers will we have? Well, here's where the math gets a tiny bit ugly, due to having to deal with integer rounding.
So, we need to "make" 22 Hammers in order to complete the Wall, right? Well, simply take 22 and divide by our production bonus. 22 / 2.25 = 9.77777 base Hammers.
But the game won't let us "use" a partial base Hammer, so it rounds up to requiring us to use a full 10 base Hammers (this point would be true even if we only needed a number that would normally "round down" like 9.11111--we would still have to "round up" to 10).
So, we need to use 10 base Hammers to complete the Wall, leaving us 13 - 10 = 3 base Hammers that would overflow.
Since 3 overflow base Hammers is less than our overflow cap of 22 base Hammers, all 3 of these base Hammers will overflow to the next build item.
Now let's say that we also whipped and that we are playing on Normal Game Speed, so the Whip gave us an extra 30 base Hammers.
Let's also say that by whipping, one citizen stopped working a Plains Hills Mine, so we will make 4 less base Hammers.
So, instead of making 13 base Hammers from our Mines, we will only make 9 base Hammers from our Mines. Add to that amount 30 base Hammers from our whipping action, and we have 39 base Hammers.
However, we calculated that only 22 base Hammers can overflow. 39 > 22, so the remainder of the base Hammers above 22 (which is 39 - 22 = 17 base Hammers) will not be maintained as Hammers.
BUG + BULL should convert all 17 of those "un-overflowable" (is that even a word?) base Hammers into 17 Gold. Who knows what the base game does, but I hear that you will get a smaller amount... let's say, for sake of argument, that you get 6 Gold for those lost base Hammers. It doesn't really matter, though, since you wanted Hammers and you aren't getting overflow Hammers beyond those 22 base overflow Hammers... Gold is a small consolation when you wanted Hammers (although getting 1 Gold for each base Hammer is better than having some of those Hammers just disappear into thin air!).
So, if you are building a Wall that costs 50 Hammers, then the maximum amount of overflow Hammers will be 50 Hammers.
However, production bonuses play havoc on this value, in that production bonuses actually reduce the amount of Hammers that can overflow.
Let 100% be the value that represents your Base Hammers
You get an extra + 100% for having the corresponding Resource (Marble, Stone, Copper, Gold, Ivory, Aluminum, etc)
You get an extra + 25% for having a Forge
You get an extra +25% for running the Organized Religion Civic while having your State Religion in the City
You can simply add up all of these values (remember to always "count" the 100% for base Hammers). Then, take the cost of the build item, divide it by your percentage total, and multiply by 100 (to get rid of the percentage).
So, say we have Stone and a Forge, but we don't have our State Religion in the City, so it doesn't matter which Religious Civic you are running.
100% base Hammers + 100% for having Stone + 25% for having the Forge = 100 + 100 + 25 = 225
50 Hammers to build the Wall (going from memory here... the actual number might be different in the game) / 225 * 100
= 0.2222222222222222 / 100
= 22.2222222222222
Here, the game is "mean" in that it doesn't allow you to overflow partial Hammers, so we round down to 22 base Hammers.
If you make more than 22 base Hammers than will be required to complete the Wall, then those Hammers will not overflow.
Before we go too much further, I would like to say that working with percentages and having to decide whether to divide by 100 or multiply by 100 can get confusing. So, I prefer to immediately convert the percentage values.
So, rather than saying that base Hammers = 100%, I say that base Hammers = 1.0
Similarly, a Resource bonus = + 1.0
and a Forge bonus = + 0.25
So, our production bonus is 1.0 + 1.0 + 0.25 = 2.25... it's easier to understand the percentages, since the game presents the info using percentages, but the math gets easier if you convert the numbers into decimal values.
Since I don't have the game open in front of me, the following part could very well be wrong, but I believe that the game shows the amount of production-enhanced Hammers will be going into the Wall, not the amount of base Hammers that will be going into the Wall. However, you should be able to see the "base Hammers" by hoving your mouse over the Hammer icon to the left of the production bar. The problem is that this value in isolation won't really help you to figure out whether or not you are going to lose Hammers due to capping of overflow Hammers.
First, you will have to take the amount of Hammers required to complete the build item. Let's say that you have 28 out of 50 Hammers invested into the Wall from last turn (or from multiple previous turns).
Let's say that the City produced 13 base Hammers (1 from the City Centre, and 4 Hammers each from 3 different Plains Hills Mines, just to keep the numbers easy to visualize).
You will take the production bonus that we calculated above (1.0 + 1.0 + 0.25 = 2.25) and multiply it against the number of base Hammers... 13 * 2.25 / = 29.25 production-enhanced Hammers.
Since we only need 50 - 28 = 22 Hammers and we are going to make 29.25 Hammers, we will complete the Wall this turn and will have a certain amount of overflow Hammers.
But how many overflow Hammers will we have? Well, here's where the math gets a tiny bit ugly, due to having to deal with integer rounding.
So, we need to "make" 22 Hammers in order to complete the Wall, right? Well, simply take 22 and divide by our production bonus. 22 / 2.25 = 9.77777 base Hammers.
But the game won't let us "use" a partial base Hammer, so it rounds up to requiring us to use a full 10 base Hammers (this point would be true even if we only needed a number that would normally "round down" like 9.11111--we would still have to "round up" to 10).
So, we need to use 10 base Hammers to complete the Wall, leaving us 13 - 10 = 3 base Hammers that would overflow.
Since 3 overflow base Hammers is less than our overflow cap of 22 base Hammers, all 3 of these base Hammers will overflow to the next build item.
Now let's say that we also whipped and that we are playing on Normal Game Speed, so the Whip gave us an extra 30 base Hammers.
Let's also say that by whipping, one citizen stopped working a Plains Hills Mine, so we will make 4 less base Hammers.
So, instead of making 13 base Hammers from our Mines, we will only make 9 base Hammers from our Mines. Add to that amount 30 base Hammers from our whipping action, and we have 39 base Hammers.
However, we calculated that only 22 base Hammers can overflow. 39 > 22, so the remainder of the base Hammers above 22 (which is 39 - 22 = 17 base Hammers) will not be maintained as Hammers.
BUG + BULL should convert all 17 of those "un-overflowable" (is that even a word?) base Hammers into 17 Gold. Who knows what the base game does, but I hear that you will get a smaller amount... let's say, for sake of argument, that you get 6 Gold for those lost base Hammers. It doesn't really matter, though, since you wanted Hammers and you aren't getting overflow Hammers beyond those 22 base overflow Hammers... Gold is a small consolation when you wanted Hammers (although getting 1 Gold for each base Hammer is better than having some of those Hammers just disappear into thin air!).
A_Hamster
Small Furry Animal
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2007
- Messages
- 627
Thanks, Dhoomstriker. That was a lot more than I expected. Your technique of converting the percentages into decimal format simplifies things greatly.
As for BUG, the hammers to gold isn't what concerns me, but rather the calculating every turn whether whipping is worthwhile. Guess I need to learn how to use WinMerge.
As for BUG, the hammers to gold isn't what concerns me, but rather the calculating every turn whether whipping is worthwhile. Guess I need to learn how to use WinMerge.
NihilZero
WHEOOHRNY
Stone and Marble are huge, failure cash alone makes them extremely powerful and wonders have the power to tip the balance of the game in the right circumstances. However, on Immortal you are pretty much forced to place your second city to capture a strategic resource in most situations (assuming you didn't get one in the BFC). What does it avail a man to gain some stone, if he loses his capital to massed barb archers a few turns later?
Much as I love wonders, sometimes you are just not destined to have any. In my last game I didn't build a world wonder until the Taj, by which stage I was getting Marble in a trade.
Much as I love wonders, sometimes you are just not destined to have any. In my last game I didn't build a world wonder until the Taj, by which stage I was getting Marble in a trade.
@dhoomstriker
I'm running 3.19 with BUG and it eats the lost hammers with no gold in return, not even on the base hammers. I did not know there was a "*UG*" mod that reclaimed them - that would almost sound like altered gameplay.
The patch they did was apparently with the intention of nerfing large overflows from low-cost accelerated items, primarily protective walls, into cash. Regardless of how daft the design of the change was it sure did that because the old trick is now worthless.
But overflow from unaccelerated medium cost items into accelerated items does not usually fall foul of the overflow cap. A worker costs 60, so if you whip it at 59/60 or 29/60 the maximum whip overflow of 29 plus a typical city's hammers per turn will most likely be in the 35-45 range which is well short of 60 and all safe, even if the city has a forge. If the city's next build is something accelerated, the overflow hammers all get accelerated and nothing is lost.
Incidentally for newcomers to the wonderful but brain-numbing world of micromanagement that's how a city with food but only 1 base hammer can build expensive infrastructure or wonders in a few turns. Build workers or settlers (food=hammers) up to a suitable point, then whip and put the overflow into the desired building. Think about 29 overflow hammers with marble+industrious+forge+organized religion and you have 87 per turn - that's a 3-turn national epic in the GP farm! Anyway there are plenty of articles about whip overflow on the forum so I'll shut up.
I'm running 3.19 with BUG and it eats the lost hammers with no gold in return, not even on the base hammers. I did not know there was a "*UG*" mod that reclaimed them - that would almost sound like altered gameplay.
The patch they did was apparently with the intention of nerfing large overflows from low-cost accelerated items, primarily protective walls, into cash. Regardless of how daft the design of the change was it sure did that because the old trick is now worthless.
But overflow from unaccelerated medium cost items into accelerated items does not usually fall foul of the overflow cap. A worker costs 60, so if you whip it at 59/60 or 29/60 the maximum whip overflow of 29 plus a typical city's hammers per turn will most likely be in the 35-45 range which is well short of 60 and all safe, even if the city has a forge. If the city's next build is something accelerated, the overflow hammers all get accelerated and nothing is lost.
Incidentally for newcomers to the wonderful but brain-numbing world of micromanagement that's how a city with food but only 1 base hammer can build expensive infrastructure or wonders in a few turns. Build workers or settlers (food=hammers) up to a suitable point, then whip and put the overflow into the desired building. Think about 29 overflow hammers with marble+industrious+forge+organized religion and you have 87 per turn - that's a 3-turn national epic in the GP farm! Anyway there are plenty of articles about whip overflow on the forum so I'll shut up.
BUG mod does NOT convert hummers into gold. Otherwise it wouldn't have been called BUnalteredGameplay.
Same goes for BULL which actually enhances BUG without altering BTS 3.19 gameplay.
I think lost overflow hammers were converted into gold in Warlords.
Same goes for BULL which actually enhances BUG without altering BTS 3.19 gameplay.
I think lost overflow hammers were converted into gold in Warlords.
It was introduced in BTS and removed in a patch because it made protective an OK trait.
huerfanista
Emperor
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2006
- Messages
- 1,276
Dhoomstriker
Girlie Builder
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 13,474
To be clear, it is the BULL .dll that provides the Gold. But, as far as I know, you need to be running BUG for BULL to work. That said, I haven't tried BULL without BUG, but it's BULL that does it... BUG alone will not peform the conversion, just like BUFFY will not perform the conversion.
Correct. When you're whipping a Worker, you're usually safe. However, the example presented was whipping Walls and Castles when one has Stone. When you have Stone, you are very likely going to lose Hammers to overflow-capping on a 50-Hammer Wall in an average City. I'm not sure exactly how much a Wall costs, but I recall it being around 50 Hammers.
A City that only produces 1 Hammer per turn does not qualify for my "average City" definition, but one that makes, say, 10 Hammers per turn, will need to invest at least 10 Hammers before it makes sense to whip. If you whip and also make 10 Hammers on the next turn, then you have just hit the overflow cap exactly in a City without a Forge or Organized Religion.
Chances are that, on average, you won't whip at time and will end up making more Hammers... but those Hammers won't be Hammers anymore, regardless of how well they are converted into Gold.
Indeed it is a good tip. It has to be weighed against the fact that while building the Settler or Worker, you are only getting a 1-to-1 Food-to-Hammer conversion. The normally quoted value of Food is greater than a 1-to-1 Food-to-Hammer ratio, since one can grow a population point (using a Granary) for less than 30 Food in many cases, while getting 30 Hammers from whipping.
So, your "trick" works best when Happiness is an issue and you are limited in how much whipping you can do... otherwise, it's often better (assuming infinite Happiness or enough not to worry about frequent whipping) to whip Hammer-based build items into your Workers or Settlers, so that you get a better than 1-to-1 Food-to-Hammer conversion.
Try it out. My understanding of why BUG and BULL are not included together by default is two-fold:
a) Macs can't use BULL's DLL
and
b) BULL changes gameplay in a couple of minor areas, like this one. It also displays otherwise "hidden" AI attitude modifiers on the F4 GLANCE screen, like "A first impression is a lasting one."
I guess I was specifically talking about the non-typical case of using whip overflows to build a wonder or other high cost building, rather than the more run of the mill case where cities are building infrastructure (granaries, lighthouses, etc.) and want to slip a worker in somewhere along the line.
But you're still right, building hammer based items is ideal compared to workers and settlers, because the city can grow then too. It's just that the city in question probably has all its cheap buildings and you either may not want any more military units at the time or units with the right hammer cost aren't available. When I say the right hammer cost I mean something that only takes a tiny amount of hammers to get point where it can be 2-whipped with the maximum of 29 hammers overflow. In a city without a forge the axeman is perfect, if available, or in a city with a forge a 40H unit if available since each pop whip gives 37H then. (Axemen can't be 2-whipped after the forge is in place so they would have to be built up to around 34/35 for a 1-whip which is not only undesirable from a happy point of view but wastes 34 hammers that we really want to have put into the wonder).
Workers on the other hand are always available, and can easily be built up to around 29/60 in this kind of city which usually has a preponderance of food and is therefore the kind of city that would build workers or settlers rather than early military units anyway.
vranasm
Deity
I am BUG+BULL user and I definitely get some gold overflow at some occasions (which I generally try to avoid, but still).
For example on whipping warrior you get 15g+15h.
Dunno if it is the same way in 3.19 BTS patch because I don't play without BUG+BULL
For example on whipping warrior you get 15g+15h.
Dunno if it is the same way in 3.19 BTS patch because I don't play without BUG+BULL
AutomatedTeller
Frequent poster
There are wonders you need to get yourself for there to be value, and some you want in specific places.
And national wonders, too. The Epics are faster with Marble (Oxford, btw, is faster with stone, not marble)
I think marble/stone is probably more important for leaders without sped up buildings, like financial and charismatic. Paying full price for everything is a drag...
And national wonders, too. The Epics are faster with Marble (Oxford, btw, is faster with stone, not marble)
I think marble/stone is probably more important for leaders without sped up buildings, like financial and charismatic. Paying full price for everything is a drag...
@Dhoomstriker.
You are right!
I've created in worldbuilder 4 pop city with granary and forge. Then I hover mouse over whip button and see:
Here it is for those who want check.
Yes it works only with BULL. With original dll you get just hammers.
This may have serious impact on the game. There are situations when you don't have anything to build ATM, so why not make some gold? It can be useful in Strike situations too. Complete new economics!
After collecting my jaw from under the table I've made search on the internet. Found nothing and asked mod creator.
Responce:
Here it is. If you use BULL and hover mouse over your empire flag you see something like that:
While official mod description states that :
There is no single word about fact that it includes unofficial patch.
And how we do compare our games in concurrent series now? It appears we play different versions! And saves are compatible!
I was pissed by this ridiculous situation: you install unofficial patch without know!
I wrote to EmperorFull again. Hope he will understand me right.
Thanks Dhoom and good job!
You are right!
I've created in worldbuilder 4 pop city with granary and forge. Then I hover mouse over whip button and see:
Spoiler :
Here it is for those who want check.
Yes it works only with BULL. With original dll you get just hammers.
This may have serious impact on the game. There are situations when you don't have anything to build ATM, so why not make some gold? It can be useful in Strike situations too. Complete new economics!
After collecting my jaw from under the table I've made search on the internet. Found nothing and asked mod creator.
Responce:
Here it is. If you use BULL and hover mouse over your empire flag you see something like that:
While official mod description states that :
There is no single word about fact that it includes unofficial patch.
And how we do compare our games in concurrent series now? It appears we play different versions! And saves are compatible!
I was pissed by this ridiculous situation: you install unofficial patch without know!
I wrote to EmperorFull again. Hope he will understand me right.
Thanks Dhoom and good job!
