The fact about hurry production cost (a bug?)

[Wreck]

Monkey, you are correct that projects are a reason to keep around hammers. And given that the game tends to end with the space race a lot of the time, I think that's a strong balancing effect that some folks here are downplaying.

But cash rushing in lieu of hammer-production does not require sacrificing science or culture. (It probably means setting the slider levels lower - but that's not significant.) By converting mines and forests to towns, you get more total commerce to spend, and thus, outproduce anyone using mines and forests.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Roland I believe you are not seeing the forest for the tree's.

For instance you explain the reasons that you still need hammers (projects) and then immediately proceed to say that hammers arent a resource that needs to be developed in the late game. I believe it is an exageration that developing hammers are not necessary in the late game and that you were right the first time, that you still need hammers.

If you quote me, then quote me completely. I said that hammers were only needed in the few cities that are used to produce projects and that the rest don't need them anymore. That means that in all but say 2 cities, you don't have to develop hammers, but you want to develop commerce (after universal suffrage).

Further, unless you are running a large gold surplus while 100% spending, cash rushing requires a science and/or culture sacrifice. If there is any problem with cash rushing at all, it stems from the fact that it IS possible to produce an abundance of otherwise useless gold while "100% spending." I'm all for a debate on that issue specifically.

Not that debate again. Sorry, but that debate has been going on for a long number of posts in another thread and it took a long while to convince the other side of the argument. I got a little bit tired of the argument and someone else finally explained it clearly enough to convince the other side. I'll present a short version. If that convinces you, then that is fine. If not, then we must just agree to disagree. I apologize for my tone in the above few sentences, it has nothing to do with you.
You're producing extra commerce because you're building cottages instead of workshops, mines and lumbermills. This extra commerce is used completely to finance rush buying. The amount of commerce that you were producing before you started converting all workshops, mines and lumbermills into cottages will still be spend on research. So the research amount stays the same while the research percentage is lowered until a level where the extra commerce from the extra cottages is going towards rush buying.
Example: By replacing workshops, lumbermills and mines by cottages total commerce production increases from 1000 to 2000.
100% of the 1000 commerce was spend on research. Now 50% of 2000 commerce is spend on research and 50% of 2000 commerce is spend on rush buying.

Also, my comment about irrigating everything had a GPP context which you didnt acknowledge. Irrigating everything is the best way to set up a GPP city. Its the best move and that, all by itself, doesnt make irrigation or anything else unbalanced.

I did acknowledge it. I said:

If you think that the irrigate everything strategy is a strong one for every city, then you're mistaken. It has been mathematically proven that cottages produce more commerce and thus science than scientists + representation bonus. And the few great scientists aren't going to help enough to balance it out. Irrigate everything is useful for one city, your great person factory. Thus it will not eliminate any other strategies from the game.

The part about great scientists is clearly about great persons. And I agree that irrigating everything is the best way to set up a great person factory. But that's only 1 city. The rest will be filled with cottages because that's the most efficient thing in the late game. There's an article in this strategy forum that explains that focusing 1 great food city which has the National Epic on Great Person production is almost as good for great person production as focusing an entire civilization on Great Person production. The reason is that all the other cities can't keep up with this 1 Great Person factory and will continuously be too late to produce a great person as the cost for great persons increases. I can point you to the article if you wish, it's very useful information.

But this is all besides the point. My argument was that cash rushing makes hammer production useless. Food production is worth as much before and after the invention of the universal suffrage civic.

 

[Dusty Monkey]

Forgive me if I don't quite understand the games mechanics..

I was under the impression that if you peg your sliders at 100% spending, that the ONLY source of cash is actual "gold-based" income (shrines, trading, and so forth) because ALL (100%) commerce-based income is "slidered" towards research/culture.

If thats the case then lowering the sliders (for ANY reason) is sacrificing beakers, culture points, happy faces, or a combination of all 3.

Presumably you think its worth the sacrifice or you would maintain 100% spending. You can assume that in a large multi-player setting that at least some of your opponents ARE going to keep their spending at 100% so it really is a sacrifice. It would be dangerous to presume that you can still out-research the competition while playing the role of advanced cash rusher, however it sounds like this is the assumption?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Forgive me if I don't quite understand the games mechanics..

I was under the impression that if you peg your sliders at 100% spending, that the ONLY source of cash is actual "gold-based" income (shrines, trading, and so forth) because ALL (100%) commerce-based income is "slidered" towards research/culture.

If thats the case then lowering the sliders (for ANY reason) is sacrificing beakers, culture points, happy faces, or a combination of all 3.

Presumably you think its worth the sacrifice or you would maintain 100% spending. You can assume that in a large multi-player setting that at least some of your opponents ARE going to keep their spending at 100% so it really is a sacrifice. It would be dangerous to presume that you can still out-research the competition while playing the role of advanced cash rusher, however it sounds like this is the assumption?

You should stop thinking in terms of research sliders. It makes you think that it determines research speed and it doesn't. What determines research speed is the amount of research not the research percentage. So if I double my commerce output, this allows me to halve my research percentage and still research at the same speed.

I compare two situations to value the effect of building massive cottages and rush buying:
1) A player who balances commerce production and hammer production
2) A player who only builds cottages for commerce production and uses the extra commerce for rush buying.
Both spend an equal amount on research, which means that the research slider is lower in situation 2. The extra money in situation 2 is spend on rush buying. So the money that's produced by a cottage in situation 2 that replaced a workshop in situation 1 can be fully spend on rush buying while maintaining the same research speed as in situation 1.

I want to compare the strength of rush buying for production purposes to the situation where I use hammer improvements for production. Of course, I want to keep all other things (like research) the same for a fair comparison.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Dusty Monkey,
Trust me when I say Roland knows his stuff. I've debated (rather embarrassingly) with him myself on the same topic, although under a slightly different context.

Having said that, gold rushing to me seems to be the most powerful late-game strategy. I just finished a game where I used this strategy.
As soon as the industrial age (factories, coal plants, U.S. and Emancipation) started, I cottaged as much of my land as possible. From then on, my GNP pretty much increased exponentially along with my power rating.
I quickly used the extra gold to start building more factories and power plants in cities that didn't even have a high hammer rate. It didn't matter because they were only rushing units anyway.
Near the very end, I had the capacity to produce AT LEAST 6 or more tanks or equivalent units each turn. I was able to focus almost entirely on military and win by domination.
I might add, this game gave me the highest score I've ever gotten.

It is true that when you have the necessary civics etc., gold rushing is the MOST EFFICIENT way to produce any building/unit (not projects though).

Roland, you definitely convinced me. I can only thank you (and a few others like DaviddesJ) for enlightening me.

EDIT fixed a typo

 

[Roland Johansen]

Ah, yes. That was a lengthy debate. It's often difficult to explain exactly what you mean on a forum so it often leads to a meaningless yes/no type discussion. Mostly this happens because both parties don't see or want to see the arguments of the other party. I'm happy that that debate didn't end that way. Thanks for the support this time.

I see that you've played a highly successful game using cash rushing as a late game strategy. Do you think that it is overpowered in the sense that in the late game, it is inefficient to use a different strategy?

 

[DaviddesJ]

It seems to me that this is not 'unbalanced'

Unbalanced would be if only a minority of leaders had the traits necessary to get this advantage.

No, that's not the right notion of "balance". There are three relevant aspects of "balance", for this discussion: (1) it's desirable for there to be multiple effective strategies, so that every game doesn't look like every other; (2) it's desirable that the game features that exist are at least occasionally useful, rather than having many features designed into the game that are so poor relative to the alternatives that there's no good reason to ever use them; (3) it's desirable that the methods of playing the game that are the most effective are used well by the AI, so that it can offer a good challenge to a skilled player without requiring massive handicaps.

Cash rushing as presently implemented fails on all of these aspects. It dominates other late-game strategies, it makes those games all look very similar to one another, and it's something that is exploitable by the human player to a much greater extent than the AI uses it.

 

[Roland Johansen]

You know how to use strong arguments DaviddesJ. I agree completely (as you probably already know).

 

[PieceOfMind]

I see that you've played a highly successful game using cash rushing as a late game strategy. Do you think that it is overpowered in the sense that in the late game, it is inefficient to use a different strategy?

I think it is overpowered and easily the most efficient way to play in the late-game. However I like to think (at the moment) it's a way the gameplay evolves. In the late-game the nations that become most powerful are those that build a large income. After all, modern history would indicate it is generally the wealthiest countries that are superpowers. I only wish there was some other way to use cash to rush improvements without all the MM of going into every city every turn buying something. Of course it would be nice too if the AI could utilise the types of strong strategies that human players tend to discover. Chop rushing and cash rushing both seem to be ineffectively used by the AI

As a late-game conquest/domination strategy it is overpowered. For other victory types I don't see it as being quite as badly overpowered. To say it's inefficient to use any other strategy is an interesting point. I think a game of this type will generally have one dominant strategy rise above all others - Just like how chop-rushing seems (at this stage) to be the most powerful early-game strategy. Even if the game is adjusted to balance both these gameplay issues, I think there will still be some other strategy that will rise above all others as the most effective or efficient.

The thing I find most annoying about the cash-rushing strat though is that it makes upgrading units usually pointless. I think it was going to cost me more than 400 gold to upgrade a cat to an artillery, yet it would have only cost me less than 200 gold to rush one in a city, even on the first turn of production. Although the upgrading doesn't require a city, I don't think that makes up for it, and the upgraded unit can't even move on its turn anyway.

But yeah, cash-rushing is overpowered, no doubt about it.

 

[Phyacis]

Dont forget slavery as an alternative to sufferage!

Sometimes you can overdo it though... s/shot from a high food city with globe

 

[Beamup]

I think a game of this type will generally have one dominant strategy rise above all others - Just like how chop-rushing seems (at this stage) to be the most powerful early-game strategy. Even if the game is adjusted to balance both these gameplay issues, I think there will still be some other strategy that will rise above all others as the most effective or efficient.

While this is certainly true, the hope would be that the new best strategy won't be as much better than the alternatives. So balance would be improved, even if not perfect. And unless some new strategy is created or improved in the balancing process, it's nearly guaranteed that will be the case.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I only wish there was some other way to use cash to rush improvements without all the MM of going into every city every turn buying something.

It seems that you don't know that the panel where you can cash rush, pop rush and set the AI settings for a city, already becomes available when you select a city. So you don't have to actually enter a city to rush buy something. You only have to select it.

You can also enter a city from the F1 screen (Domestic advisor) by clicking the square in front of a city in the list. This might be handy for rush buying some stuff in the right cities.
Also when in the F1 list and a city is selected, its rush buying panel becomes available again. Pressing the c-key centers the map on the city, so that you know which city it is.

I hope these management options can help you somewhat.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I hope these management options can help you somewhat.

Cheers! They certainly will.

Dont forget slavery as an alternative to sufferage!

Good point, but the problem with slavery is you can only use the pop rushing strat in the globe theatre city (effectively anyway). It doesn't match having several cities rushing units under the cash-rush strat, each one probably being even faster than the single globe theatre city depending on how much food it has.

While this is certainly true, the hope would be that the new best strategy won't be as much better than the alternatives. So balance would be improved, even if not perfect. And unless some new strategy is created or improved in the balancing process, it's nearly guaranteed that will be the case.

I agree. Do you ever think though that no matter how much the game is tweaked, it will only ever tend towards being balanced, as if 'balance' is some sort of intangible unreachable goal? Even if the new best strategy isn't as powerful as the old fixed/removed ones, it will still become the best strat and for that reason alone it will be tested/utilised a lot more and so become more refined by the best of the players. It may never reach the power of the old strats but relative to the new play styles it will be perceived as possibly just as powerful. I'm no expert of course and I wouldn't take my opinion as anything other than just an idea.
Anyway, I can't wait to see what has been changed in the patch, as I'm guessing the delays are due to larger-than-previous changes to the game.

 

[Beamup]

Even if the new best strategy isn't as powerful as the old fixed/removed ones, it will still become the best strat and for that reason alone it will be tested/utilised a lot more and so become more refined by the best of the players. It may never reach the power of the old strats but relative to the new play styles it will be perceived as possibly just as powerful.

I believe you're right, and this is the point I was trying to make. You said it a lot better than I did, though.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Cheers! They certainly will.

You're welcome!

I agree. Do you ever think though that no matter how much the game is tweaked, it will only ever tend towards being balanced, as if 'balance' is some sort of intangible unreachable goal? Even if the new best strategy isn't as powerful as the old fixed/removed ones, it will still become the best strat and for that reason alone it will be tested/utilised a lot more and so become more refined by the best of the players. It may never reach the power of the old strats but relative to the new play styles it will be perceived as possibly just as powerful. I'm no expert of course and I wouldn't take my opinion as anything other than just an idea.
Anyway, I can't wait to see what has been changed in the patch, as I'm guessing the delays are due to larger-than-previous changes to the game.

This is exactly why a great developer of games like Blizzard makes dozens of patches with mostly game balance fixes. After each patch another strategy becomes dominant. But the players are mostly happy with this attitude from the developer since the game does tend to get a little better with each iteration. Perfection might be an unattainable goal, but that doesn't stop us from trying to achieve it.

 

[DaviddesJ]

This is exactly why a great developer of games like Blizzard makes dozens of patches with mostly game balance fixes. After each patch another strategy becomes dominant. But the players are mostly happy with this attitude from the developer since the game does tend to get a little better with each iteration. Perfection might be an unattainable goal, but that doesn't stop us from trying to achieve it.

Another possibility is to design the game so that the rules themselves change from game to game, and thus the balance is different in different games. Each game is not "balanced", but always in different ways.

The "trait" system of Civ4 does this, to some extent, but the traits aren't really powerful enough to completely change how you play (e.g., there's no trait that's so strong as to make you want to completely ignore cottages, or chopping, etc.).

 

[Beamup]

Another possibility is to design the game so that the rules themselves change from game to game, and thus the balance is different in different games. Each game is not "balanced", but always in different ways.

Now THAT is a very interesting idea! It'd be tough to implement well, but if it was done right, the possibilities would be incredible.

Unfortunately it would probably only appeal to a niche audience.

 

[Spammurabi]

Gold rushing in the late game is indeed a powerful strategy, but it still is not available at it's superior-to-hammers level until ~2/3 of the way through the game. People insisting that cottages -> towns is the only valid strategy because eventually towns are unbeatable are not, as I see it, fully taking into account one thing:

YOU NEED A LOT OF HAMMERS IN THE FIRST 2/3 OF THE GAME

Up until US, Emancipation and Kremlin, cash rushing is either not possible or much less efficient than standard hammer production. So, you're going to have to have a lot of cities focusing on hammer production if you expect to build up your infastructure and have an army able to defend your cottage-ridden cities from foreign invaders.

And, as has been said, it takes a significant amount of time to change from hammer production to towns. With emancipation, it'll cost you 35 turns on a tile to get from a cottage to a town, not counting worker costs. At the same time, you could be producing an extra 2 or 3 production from that tile, or 2 food from a farm post-biology, which you lose as you work your less-than-stellar cottages, hamlets, and villages. Is this loss of production or food worth the long-term gains of a super-efficient town? Maybe.

Gold-rushing is a very powerful strategy, and I like to use it late in the game, especially with the Kremlin. I'll intentionally lower my science rate so I can rush more of my buildings and units, even. The fact that you can get it to a 1-1 gold:hammer ratio does strike me as a bit unbalanced, however. I think that if production bonuses such as Factory, Org. Rel, and Forge were not taken into account that would be a reasonable fix, or perhaps changing the Kremlin to make rushing 75% to rush. I don't think that gold rushing needs a monstrous change, like doubling the costs to rush everything and nerfing the Kremlin and eliminating factory bonuses all at once. I'm not entirely convinced that any fix is necessary.

There are costs of running a cottage-heavy civilization- you have lower population and production than your neighbors. While you might enjoy a tech lead, your opponents will have far more units than you, and a smart (or merely aggressive) opponent will take advantage of your weakness. A balance between hammer and gold production must be maintained throughout the majority of the game, and retooling your entire economy to focus entirely on gold rushing requires a great number or worker turns and sacrificing production or food on your newly cottaged tiles.

Cottages are powerful late, weak early. Kind of like how Pihilosophical or Creative are powerful early, weak late, or how organized is fairly weak early but snowballs to become more and more powerful as the game progresses. It's a trade-off.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Welcome to civfanatics

Gold rushing in the late game is indeed a powerful strategy, but it still is not available at it's superior-to-hammers level until ~2/3 of the way through the game. People insisting that cottages -> towns is the only valid strategy because eventually towns are unbeatable are not, as I see it, fully taking into account one thing:

YOU NEED A LOT OF HAMMERS IN THE FIRST 2/3 OF THE GAME

Up until US, Emancipation and Kremlin, cash rushing is either not possible or much less efficient than standard hammer production. So, you're going to have to have a lot of cities focusing on hammer production if you expect to build up your infastructure and have an army able to defend your cottage-ridden cities from foreign invaders.

Of course gold rushing is not overpowered in the first part of the game. You need the civic universal suffrage to be able to gold rush and it just isn't available in the early game. Most of the posters in this thread therefore call it a late game strategy. You should start using it in the late game. You might want to start switching workshops/lumbermills/mines to cottages a little before the invention of the universal suffrage civic, but not too long before.

And, as has been said, it takes a significant amount of time to change from hammer production to towns. With emancipation, it'll cost you 35 turns on a tile to get from a cottage to a town, not counting worker costs. At the same time, you could be producing an extra 2 or 3 production from that tile, or 2 food from a farm post-biology, which you lose as you work your less-than-stellar cottages, hamlets, and villages. Is this loss of production or food worth the long-term gains of a super-efficient town? Maybe.

Villages are already superior to mines/workshops/lumbermills and only cost 15 turns to develop. Villages give 5 commerce which can be converted to 10 gold (banks, markets, groceries) which can be converted in 3 1/3 production which is more than the production from mines/workshops/lumbermills. Towns with the universal suffrage hammer bonus and the free speech commerce bonus and the Kremlin bonus and the financial trait bonus are just really heavily overpowered.

If the calculations for the production power of a town (with the universal suffrage and free speech civic) earlier in this thread don't convince you, then I won't try it any further (see post 27 of DaviddesJ). They're in my opinion the best way of showing the power of gold rushing.

I don't think that gold rushing should be the standard way of construction. It should be the more expensive way of construction that can be used to boost something in a certain city. Under the optimal circumstances it should still be a little more expensive than the standard way of construction. The reason for this is that it is far more flexible. Commerce can be used to research, to buy all sorts of things in diplomacy, to finance spying missions and to rush constructions like buildings, units and wonders in just the area where it is needed. If it is also more efficient to rush constructions then to just build them normally, then it will dominate any other late game strategy.

By the way, you shouldn't replace farms by cottages until your city has reached its optimal size. We're talking of replacing hammer producing terrain improvements by cottages. The cities can better reach their optimal size quickly.

 

[PieceOfMind]

There are costs of running a cottage-heavy civilization- you have lower population and production than your neighbors. While you might enjoy a tech lead, your opponents will have far more units than you, and a smart (or merely aggressive) opponent will take advantage of your weakness. A balance between hammer and gold production must be maintained throughout the majority of the game, and retooling your entire economy to focus entirely on gold rushing requires a great number or worker turns and sacrificing production or food on your newly cottaged tiles.

Sorry Spammurabi but I don't agree with you. This is only personal experience but as I said in an earlier post, after "enacting" this strategy, my GNP AND power increased almost exponentially, whereas for the entire game up to that point both had only increased roughly linearly. Remember too that power is primarily dependent on unit number and strength. You have the impression that cash-rushing gives you a tech-lead but not more units. We are arguing that cash-rushing is a powerful strategy for buidling things (as implied by the strategy's name) - not for tech leads. Of course having lots of towns is also good for getting a tech-lead as well. Therein lies the key though. There doesn't appear to be any significant weakness to the strategy. You don't have to sacrifice research to use this strategy effectively.

I don't agree either that the time of enacting the strategy requires a lot of worker turns. Hopefully you would already have many commerce cities that have focused on town growth. You would only have to change a few farms here and there to cottages, and some watermills etc. Leave your 3 or 4 best production cities with hammers obviously as you will need them for building projects or for building those first factories etc. If you have a GP factory it may be best to leave that alone but that's up to you.

As Roland noted, the cottages become better than workshops very quickly (after reaching village), meaning that as the towns grow, the benefit only gets larger. It is assumed you would have a stable enough empire to last 30 or so turns of reduced-production. The pay-off makes it worth it.

And you are correct that this is a late-game strategy, and as Roland noted we have all said that. But as a late-game strategy it is VERY POWERFUL. Note my opinions are for SP games as I have little experience with MP games.

It may be true you will have a lower population than a rival who focuses more on farms, but why does that matter? AFAIK population is only useful for scoring. Having 10 citizens work 10 farms is not more beneficial than having only 4 citizens work 4 towns. As long as you manage your improvements so as to maximise the number of towns you can work (which may mean building a farm or two here and there), population is not important. In other words, population in itself is not something that gives you any benefit, as you know, but population is only useful for what it can DO. Citizens that work only to increase the number of citizens is kind of like a viscious, pointless cycle, unless maybe you like pop-rushing.

If you are dubious about the strategy's effectiveness, at least try using it in one game. I was honestly surprised at how well it worked when I tried it, even having read about it already.