The Deity Challenge Line-up #30 - Iroquois

So has anyone ever written down the maths to prove that the Longhouse is actually inferior to the Workshop? Given the +1 goes to the base production and is then multiplied by the other % modifiers it seems to me like the longhouse could actually be better in some circumstances, if not all. I might have to have a look once I get deeper into this game.

I figure that even without the food benefit of working lumber mills instead of mines, the longhouse might not actually be terrible.

Hypothetical (pretty simple) example - 15 citizen, 6 working lumber mills, 7 working riverside farms and 2 working uni specialists. +5 base production would give what? 18 production? from the six lumber mills, equivalent to 6 mines but with +6 food over the mining scenario, essentially moving the balance of production to food focused citizens. In the scenario of a vanilla civ with a normal workshop, you would have to only work 5 mines to keep nearly the same growth (8*4=32 food vs 7*4+6=34 from iriquois). Assuming 5 keeps the same # of turns to pop growth, you get 15 base production vs 18. Note that the workshop only gives a 10% modifier to boost that to 16.5 v 18. This proves the advantage of the longhouse in an over-simplified and early situation. I'll obviously have to look at the yields a bit throughout the game and compare relative yields at different times to prove whether or not the longhouse is better overall. As a quick analysis, it comes down to whether +base hammers x other % modifiers works > +10% base hammers.

I guess the other point to mention is that it synergizes well with the free forest roads of Hiawatha too.

Looks like I'll be playing either a science victory or modern domination I guess. I could try for cultural, but I have no idea what I'm doing there... we'll see!

 

@nickytootricky - Thanks, and nice win yourself! I like your city placement Why did you opt for mines over lumber mills on most of those hills? Because you were planning to take Order? I know you did an LP, but I'm more of a reader and watching an LP with my full attention just makes me turn on the game and play.

@Olodune - How do you base your bombers when you take so few cities? Carriers alone? I know capturing a bunch of cities like I did kills your tech rate, but I find I need to take cities in lines so I have forward bases. I try to keep my bombers running missions 24/7 in support of a ground offensive. In general, I like your idea of training up GWB for bombers instead of artillery for RA, but with their limited range it seems like you'd have to put off taking many cities until you could upgrade.

@Bimblecrumbs - Nice win! I'm not very good with XBows, but I think this was a tough map to do much with them. To answer your other question, I enjoy it when someone takes the time to take a lot of screenshots and inline them with their text. I know I don't but I still appreciate those that do.

 

@BearStew - I think the longhouse is better on this map than a workshop, but that's not the rule. The Longhouse is kind of like the Kris Swordsman.

 

Third time through, T344 (!) Diplo. Score was 1619 adjusted (7, Marcus Aurelius), 1101 raw.

I am really appreciating the write-ups, especially how much more control folks over their games than I do. My winning or not is so much up to whim of the AI.

I lost count of the number of World Leader votes I missed. I had Globalization with spies-as-diplomats in every cap, 8 CS locked down with Trade Routes, and bribes for a couple more, and had passed World Religion. For a while, I had low-grade war going on before I figured out that was costing me a handful of votes, but the required count did not start getting close until I came-in-first-but-not-enough-to-win a few times. I was not anticipating diplo to be such a chore, as I had even built the Forbidden Palace (quite rare for me to catch).

That game, my 2nd try, ended soon after that post on T319 to SS launch. This third game, [snip] did not build Hubble until T322, so it turns out that SV was quite viable (I had deferred Satellites to get to Globalization ASAP). I was working on SS parts at the end because I ran out of anything else to do between WL votes.

There is so much RNG between plays!

I don't think your hypothetical example for a typical Iroquois cap are unreasonable, but six working lumber mills for every expo is not realistic IMHO. The real costs for the longhouse is that (1) early chops are too valuable to pass up, and (2) mid-to-late-game grassland forests are more valuable as farms (not even counting the chops) than longhouse buffed lumber mills.

 

Absolutely. That T207 DV write-up just oozes "control". Loving this thread

 

Didn't understand this immediately but Longhouse doesn't have the 10% modifier, correct? Indeed it'll be inferior to workshop often especially in big cities that have a large hammer output already.

 

Workshops vs. Longhouses. Spoilers because I use the map at hand as an example.

Spoiler :

By turn 207 on this particular map, which is a special case for the Iroquois, my cap had +10 production from the Longhouse (9 lumber mills and a deer). This could have been increased to +14 as a theoretical maximum with the hill, deer and 2 furs which I did chop, but the early chop bonus from those enabled me to build everything I needed to and was necessary.

A +10% workshop bonus would have given me +7.0-7.5 depending on my growth/hammer ratio, and assuming I still wanted to grow.

So even with this perfect forested start, the Workshop is almost as good as the Longhouse by the Industrial Era. By this point 3 hammers don't mean all that much, and the gap will continue to close as you advance through the tech tree and your city's production increases.

Added to that, it's not like I was working all 10 forests until the Industrial Era anyway due to population limitations. The +10% bonus would have always been behind what the Longhouse provided, but not by all that much.

It's also worth noting that the 10% bonus doesn't rely solely on tile selection, and doesn't constrain you into working forests when you might prefer to work maximum growth; a solid 10% bonus is much easier to work into specific tile selection strategies.

 

I did not realize the longhouse buffs all forests (e.g., deer, furs) and not just lumber mills. Chopping camps-on-plains is usually free hammers, but not with the Iroquois!

Since I misunderstood the longhouse buff, I was putting lumber mills on the forested hills (and by chance, I did not chop the camps), but wouldn’t Trading Posts have been better?

I don’t much mind the extra tile management, but it seems like a player would need five or more hills-or-camps-with-forest for the longhouse to be competitive with workshop. That might not be too much to ask on most maps. Even ring-three forests-on-flats seem like they are better chopped than saved for late TP.

That said, this map was great for Iroquois, and it averaged 5+ hills-or-camps-with-forest, but did anyone hit that number with at least four cities?

 

Yeah, industrial era is the cutoff point in which the Longhouse actually starts losing out to the regular Workshop, the percentage outweighs the flat bonus. I have to wonder if perhaps the +10% was supposed to stay but the devs forgot about it and didn't want to admit, or perhaps it would make the Longhouse a bit OP

 

That’s what I think happened. Every other UB is strictly additive. The UU that are so different that they seem very flawed (e.g., Korean Turtle Ship) are at least quite strong in other ways, and being a UU, any disadvantage is temporary. Compromised UA (i.e., India and Venice) can worked around. A gimped workshop seems like it must be an accident. I would argue that it is similar to stoneworks not being available to cities founded on plains, but even worse of a mistake.

 

Seems likely to me too. Pity they're not that good a civ in the first place. I feel the 10% could have stayed in without balancing problems.

 

Gawd I hate that, I always forget about that bit and then I wonder why the hell is Stone Works not listed, a crapton of stone to work with but no, sorry.

 

I like the model where Longhouses are better early, but are surpassed by Workshops in the later stages. Perhaps LHs could be even cheaper or available earlier or have an extra hammer?

 

Spoiler :

On this map GWBs were a little troublesome since the only natural training target is Assyria. In general I like to use cities being razed and carriers as additional bases. Carriers can be great since you can move (for extra range) -> bomb -> move back into Friendly territory (for air repair healing). Also GWBs are wonderful for defending against ground invasions, so if the goal is just to train until Radar you can declare and kill units. DCL #10 had a better Air game for me on a harder map

Generally, I like Flight before Plastics for air domination games, but here I didn't do that, mostly because I wanted a big tech lead over the Incans. That meant I had Stealth by ~t243 at which point range is not a problem. Clearly this is not a fast way to win (unless you count "fast" by hours invested ).

 

If you like Civ5 to resemble reality you are certainly right, can't live in the forests forever and prosper. Cheaper or more base hammers would be ok indeed.

 

I'm all kinds of sorry but the box.com are absolute lunatics and they deleted the spreadsheet without notice, because they claim it's a copyright breach. It will take some time to get it back but naturally, I will discontinue using that service, on the premise of their being idiots

 

I can't believe this is even up for debate. Not having early chops limits you hugely. Longhouses completely suck.

@ST: Can you forward me their correspondence? I have some experience in consumer advocacy and might be able to do something. They never said anything to me when it was in my folder.

 

Compared to civ4 chops seem to be less powerful in this game as base production is generally higher and getting up improvements costs a lot of time with tradition in this game. For that reason i don't find myself chopping that much very early. Maybe i should chop a bit more but there always seems to be something more important to do like connecting a resource.

~T160 spoiler

Spoiler :

I have played past Science Method in this game, lumber mills everywhere. As a result production is really high in most of my cities as a result i don't have to buy schools and factories. So i can spend most money on cs and buying good tiles. I have some 6 city states allied.

Meanwhile food ships take care of the food situation.

 

Spoiler :

I read ZiggyZaggy's (sp?) write-up on Iroquois awhile ago, but seem to recall he recommended that path as well. I know I did the same and it did make my t120 Edu seem very slow.

Regarding the 6+ city tradition, I've been doing more and more of this. I quite often do some sort of Lib/Trad mix (ALWAYS open Tradition first), mostly for the cheaper settlers (but also because I'm a Petra/wonder wh*re). That's my normal default for DCL games because I know how to maximize the odds of winning, if not necessarily winning quickly (gotta make sure my name stays on the first page of the finisher's list so I have to win, right?). Trying to improve win times, I'm playing around a bit with different mixes. Tradition Opener > Honor Opener opens up a ton of possibilities, and just means you chop for settlers (except for on this map). Anyways, I haven't dialed in a preferred change in strategy, but, YES, 6+ city Tradition does work.....sometimes quite well.

 

I couldn't agree more. On THIS map, it was kinda fun to really push the limits of what the Longhouse can do. WF should be an absolute no-brainer on this map and I do luv mid-game production.