Strike - how does it work?

[georgjorge]

After a recent experience where I would have easily won the game if I had just gone into permanent strike (but didn't) I started to wonder about the effects of strike.

The Civilopedia (at least in my version) states somewhat vague that my units will be disbanded, buildings destroyed and then even production will stop. That sounds scary. However, in testing I noticed that while units (including workers) were disbanded down to one garrison per city, Settlers never were disbanded, no buildings were destroyed and production never stopped. Which makes me wonder if someone out there knows more about the effects of permanent strike than me...?

I also wondered about its viability in certain scenarios. When going for a Cuirassier breakout, there often comes a time where I want to run 100% research while not having an army besides warrior garrisons, and my workers don't have anything left to do. It might be worth sometimes to just go into permanent strike if it doesn't do anything other than disband my Workers to keep up research, then when I reach certain techs adjust the slider again and start building an army for real.

 

[nate46]

>It might be worth sometimes to just go into permanent strike if it doesn't do anything other than disband my Workers to keep up research

Its impossible to set your science slider higher than 0% if you don't have any money to pay expenses. It will automatically drop the slider when you end the turn.

 

[georgjorge]

Damn, there goes my glorious idea.

Still, it might be useful to look into strike mechanics more in detail.

 

[Macksideshow]

Damn, there goes my glorious idea.

Still, it might be useful to look into strike mechanics more in detail.

Strike happens when you run out of gold and your gold income is negative with sliders at zero percent. Your economy is in the tank.

You then need to drag your economy back to a positive gold income if you ever want to research tech or own units again. For this to make sense you would have to still be capturing cities (or maybe pillaging) or else it would likely be better to disband or withdraw your units to friendly territory and start the economy recovery earlier.

If you are capturing cities or pillaging then you have a gold income so you will have spend that meaningfully or there will be no strike too gain advantage from.

One might take a turn or two of strike while capturing cities for income to maintain the war for profit. Every city you keep will further exacerbate your negative income problem. Razing cities usually doesn't hurt the enemy enough to justify the negative diplo. Could work early for particularly juicy cities when gold reserves and income are small relative to city maintenance otherwise you should realistically have enough of a buffer to avoid strikes.

Maybe, just maybe, your units are fighting enemy units and you are gaining Great General points and you could buy a few extra turns of free unit maintenance and GG points. It's a pretty niche situation and I doubt you could justify keeping your economy in the no gold/no income hole which delays your tech considerably for GG points.

Avoid strikes seems a pretty clear heuristic to me but I am interested in other opinions and of course understanding game mechanics is always a worthy cause.

 

[MegaLurker]

It's useful to know that on the first turn of strike there are no consequences.

The only time I see it making sense to allow yourself to go into a more prolonged strike is when you're close to winning and just letting it happens gets you there a few turns faster. Obviously at that point you don't need any more research and likely have more units than you need anyway.

 

[Takesitez]

In my second game after I started playing again recently, I did a Hatty game on deity where I chariot rushed into a situation that was fast approaching a strike. I had bad commerce in the capital so I was forced to work alot of bad tiles to try and keep the strike at bay as I limped to currency. I 'm not done with that game yet, but even 1000 years later, I can feel the effects as I'm engaging target n°2.

So far not very interesting for those discussing it, but it did make me think about an old game that was on youtube where one of you forumers horsearchered himself into total strike on Deity (or was it immortal) and proceeded to showcase the effects and the recuperation. If any of you has that link handy, I'm sure that it would be very helpful for the mute segment of this forum. If I remember right, he disbanded most of his army in the knowledge that a single garrison unit would not be destroyed per city, amongst some other nifty things.

 

[elitetroops]

This subject has been discussed in very much detail in the current HoF G-Major. Starting with this post by Kaitzilla, which explains the details about the mechanics.

 

[georgjorge]

Thank you for the heads-up! That's exactly the scenario I was thinking of originally: When you are a lot more powerful than the AIs but can't keep up economically (either because of very early and succesful conquest, or because of absurd population figures with Sushi).

I had a game where all I needed to do to win Domination was to put out settlers and settle all the unclaimed land. However, as I was overly afraid of strike I put all my production into Wealth and working cottages instead. If I had known the exact mechanics of strike (no Settlers disbanded, no production stopped) I would have chosen differently.

 

[elitetroops]

I had a game where all I needed to do to win Domination was to put out settlers and settle all the unclaimed land. However, as I was overly afraid of strike I put all my production into Wealth and working cottages instead. If I had known the exact mechanics of strike (no Settlers disbanded, no production stopped) I would have chosen differently.

In the last couple of day some more things about strikes were discovered in the thread I mentioned. Naval units with units loaded cannot be disbanded by strike, but units on transports can disband and once they are all disbanded, the transport can disband as well. However, if there is a settler loaded, the naval unit cannot disband either. So in the scenario you describe, you could even use Galleons to ferry around the settlers, as long as every galleon at all times has at least one settler loaded.