The Order Stratagem

[vale]

Governors Manor even benefits from unhappy, if it's working as intended now.

If the intended bonus from unhappy population is 1 hammer per unhappy population as mentioned on the wiki, it is safe to say it is still buggy. I can't say exactly what is going wrong, sometimes it is giving way more hammers than expected, sometimes way fewer, but it is unpredictable to me at least what the exact formula being used is.

If anyone has some insight as to how the bonus hammers are calculated, please enlighten.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

For the Calabim, it is probably best to follow this stratagem long enough to build the level of the altar needed to keep hell out of your territoery, them switch to the veil and adopt its civic.

 

[Polycrates]

Ring of Flames is pretty awesome. High Priests of the Order get Pillar of Fire and Bless - these are both handy. Also, when you're rampantly conquering things, you often run your economy into the ground. The extra -40% upkeep modifier from basilicas is crucial here, if you are to conquer and stay at 100% tech rate. Also, it allows you to build up a much larger army. The 10% military production bonus is icing on the cake. Also, I usually put Runes of Kilmorph and The Order in each city, thus getting the monetary bonus of the Runes. I just switch to the Order as my mid-to-late religion.

Of course, an Octopus Overlords/Bannor/Ashen Veil Crusade would probably work just as well. That's usually my route (Minus the Crusade civic) when I go with the Kuriotates.

Ring of Flames is awesome, but I guess the question is whether it's awesome enough to base a large amount of your game around it, instead of saving the expensive research points for something else. Also, a spiritual civ could run veil instead for the ritualists, as well as the other incredible veil benefits, and just switch back to kilmorph a couple of times when you have the prophets saved up for levels 1-3 and 4-5 of the altar (and maybe build a few stonewardens while youre at it), and then permanently back to veil.

@ Polycrates
Maintenance cuts are far more valuable later on in the game than gold bonuses because of two factors:
1. Rising maintenance costs as your empire grows. Runes of Kilmorph will only provide a flat boost of gold (+3 per city), 40% of your maintenance will end up being larger than 3 gold if your empire keeps expanding and your cities keep growing.
2. Inflation of expenses. Inflation will only affect the expenses of your empire. This is a percentage increase of all your expenses and the best way to fight this increase of expenses is to eliminate the expenses entirely because multiplying 0 by 100% (or higher!) is 0 but 10 + 100%(10) -3 -60%(10) = 11 gold in costs.

I'm a huge fan of the Zulus so I can definitely see where you're coming from here. But let's say you're running veil, it's not three gold, it's one gold plus the gold that the priest specialists are giving you, which in a decent mid-game city is maybe twelve to fifteen priests (a number that also grows later on), plus bonuses from whatever buildings you've whipped in (money changer, tax office, gambling house, etc). For me, that has always far outstripped the cost of extra cities and military, even without courthouses (and you can whip in instant courthouses anyway any time you've got a spare 6 people floating around).
And sure the cost increases with more cities, but your income increases much more quickly, so 50% research from a large empire is still better than 100% from a tiny one, even discounting the massive benefits of running gambling houses.
Actually, I've found that city maintenance pales in comparison to civic maintenance in this mod anyway.

 

[Gamestation]

I'm a huge fan of the Zulus so I can definitely see where you're coming from here. But let's say you're running veil, it's not three gold, it's one gold plus the gold that the priest specialists are giving you, which in a decent mid-game city is maybe twelve to fifteen priests (a number that also grows later on), plus bonuses from whatever buildings you've whipped in (money changer, tax office, gambling house, etc). For me, that has always far outstripped the cost of extra cities and military, even without courthouses (and you can whip in instant courthouses anyway any time you've got a spare 6 people floating around).
And sure the cost increases with more cities, but your income increases much more quickly, so 50% research from a large empire is still better than 100% from a tiny one, even discounting the massive benefits of running gambling houses.
Actually, I've found that city maintenance pales in comparison to civic maintenance in this mod anyway.

Well I'm not too sure what to say about this since before you were talking about using Runes of Kilmorph. Although the bolded portion does raise a good question on why adopt Sacrifice the Weak. You are aware that civic maintenance is based on population size right? If you made your cities as huge as you can with this civic, the civic maintenance would be huge no matter what civics you choose (besides the no upkeep civics). I'm not sure how much each population point increases the cost but I would imagine it goes up pretty high unless you were a philosophical leader (no educational maintenance). Also you would have to actually make all those people happy enough to become priests. I suppose the point though is to have more specialists working than laborers without hitting any limitation that would remove the usefulness of having a large population?

 

[Grey Fox]

I suppose the point though is to have more specialists working than laborers without hitting any limitation that would remove the usefulness of having a large population?

 

[Gamestation]

What if there's nothing useful to whip?

 

[vale]

Another unit is never useless. Even just a simple prophet to be sacrificed immediately for a mini culture-bomb can be powerful if you understand and abuse the mechanic behind culture bombing.

Low (or no) city maintenance just cannot compare to the utility of Sacrifice the Weak. Now if I could just get an answer as to how exactly unhappy people benefit the Governor's Manors?

 

[Grey Fox]

Now if I could just get an answer as to how exactly unhappy people benefit the Governor's Manors?

Governor's Manor is supposed to give +1 Hammer for every Unhappy population, but it doesn't seem to work exactly as it's supposed to. At least not last time I tried. (I did get hammers, but even with no unhappy, and it the amount didn't change when I got more unhappy)

 

[xanaqui42]

If the intended bonus from unhappy population is 1 hammer per unhappy population as mentioned on the wiki, it is safe to say it is still buggy. I can't say exactly what is going wrong, sometimes it is giving way more hammers than expected, sometimes way fewer, but it is unpredictable to me at least what the exact formula being used is.

If anyone has some insight as to how the bonus hammers are calculated, please enlighten.

Here's the calculation:

int CvCity::getBaseYieldRate(YieldTypes eIndex)
{
	FAssertMsg(eIndex >= 0, "eIndex expected to be >= 0");
	FAssertMsg(eIndex < NUM_YIELD_TYPES, "eIndex expected to be < NUM_YIELD_TYPES");

//FfH: Modified by Kael 05/22/2007
//	return m_aiBaseYieldRate[eIndex];
    int iYield = m_aiBaseYieldRate[eIndex];
    if (iYield == YIELD_PRODUCTION)
    {
        if (hasBuilding((BuildingTypes)GC.getInfoTypeForString("BUILDING_GOVERNORS_MANOR")))
        {
            iYield += unhappyLevel();
        }
    }

	return iYield;
//FfH: End Modify

}

unhappyLevel is calculted as follows:

int CvCity::unhappyLevel(int iExtra)
{
	int iAngerPercent;
	int iUnhappiness;
	int iI;

	iUnhappiness = 0;

	if (!isNoUnhappiness())
	{
		iAngerPercent = 0;

		iAngerPercent += getOvercrowdingPercentAnger(iExtra);
		iAngerPercent += getNoMilitaryPercentAnger();
		iAngerPercent += getCulturePercentAnger();
		iAngerPercent += getReligionPercentAnger();
		iAngerPercent += getHurryPercentAnger();
		iAngerPercent += getConscriptPercentAnger();
		iAngerPercent += getWarWearinessPercentAnger();

		for (iI = 0; iI < GC.getNumCivicInfos(); iI++)
		{
			iAngerPercent += GET_PLAYER(getOwnerINLINE()).getCivicPercentAnger((CivicTypes)iI);
		}

		iUnhappiness = ((iAngerPercent * (getPopulation() + iExtra)) / GC.getDefineINT("PERCENT_ANGER_DIVISOR"));

		iUnhappiness -= min(0, getLargestCityHappiness());
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, getMilitaryHappiness());
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, getCurrentStateReligionHappiness());
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, getBuildingBadHappiness());
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, getExtraBuildingBadHappiness());
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, getFeatureBadHappiness());
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, getBonusBadHappiness());
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, getReligionBadHappiness());
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, getCommerceHappiness());
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, area()->getBuildingHappiness(getOwnerINLINE()));
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, GET_PLAYER(getOwnerINLINE()).getBuildingHappiness());
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, (getExtraHappiness() + GET_PLAYER(getOwnerINLINE()).getExtraHappiness()));
		iUnhappiness -= min(0, GC.getHandicapInfo(getHandicapType()).getHappyBonus());
	}

	return max(0, iUnhappiness);
}

To me, this looks a lot like the unhappy population. For example, if unhappyLevel > 0, We Love the King day can't be turned on. Simuarly, unhappyLevel population can't be assigned to work tiles, and if it's greater than 0, you get the EFFECT_CITY_BURNING_SMOKE.

Without knowing what you're seeing, I should note that the base yield rate is multiplied by the yield rate modifier to get actual production. Perhaps you're noting the effects of non-100% production yield rate modifiers?

 

[Polycrates]

Well I'm not too sure what to say about this since before you were talking about using Runes of Kilmorph. Although the bolded portion does raise a good question on why adopt Sacrifice the Weak. You are aware that civic maintenance is based on population size right? If you made your cities as huge as you can with this civic, the civic maintenance would be huge no matter what civics you choose (besides the no upkeep civics). I'm not sure how much each population point increases the cost but I would imagine it goes up pretty high unless you were a philosophical leader (no educational maintenance). Also you would have to actually make all those people happy enough to become priests. I suppose the point though is to have more specialists working than laborers without hitting any limitation that would remove the usefulness of having a large population?

Nah, I'm just talking comparative theology generally here. Veil just seems the obvious benchmark to hold the order to for "benefits justifying switching religion". You're going to have big populations in this mod anyway, regardless of the religion (and especially when you spam out farms). And as population grows, sure your civic upkeep increases, but you're getting 1 gold per extra priest specialist anyway (more with buildings), so I don't see larger populations as a problem (and useful people more than pay for themselves anyway, priests or not). It's because of these quick big populations in conquered territories that city maintenance is so minor in comparison.
But regardless, I've never not had more money than I knew what to do with whenever I've run priest spam. Plus you get money from conquered cities and LOTS of money from pillaging all those towns you're going to turn into farms. So yeah, I'm not entirely sold on basilicas here.

But yeah Sacrifice the Weak is less about running more priests total (though there is that), and more about getting to full population quicker as well as whipping the everloving snot out of that population as both a precursor and adjunct to running a bunch of priests everywhere.

 

[vale]

Perhaps you're noting the effects of non-100% production yield rate modifiers?

This is right up the alley of the response I was hoping to get and based on my very basic programming knowledge I think I would agree with your conclusion that the intent is that unhappy population equals bonus production.

However, my experience with it is very different and similar to Grey Fox's. I am worldbuildering up some examples since I have no Calabim saves and will post the screenshots belowin spoilers.

Example 1: I worldbuildered a Governor's Manor into my capital turn 1 and checked the results. Then I worldbuildered it up to 10 population and a border pop and checked again. Then I did a couple of checks where I did things to decrease the unhappiness. Results in spoilers (yes I got overanxious when building the city and spammed b a little too much):

Spoiler :

result: 2 bonus hammers

result: still 2 bonus hammers

result: still 2 bonus hammers

result: yet again just 2 bonus hammers

Example 2: This time at turn one, my first step was to worldbuilder up to population 10 and a border pop before putting in the manor. I then did various checks where I did things to decrease unhappiness. Results in spoilers below:

Spoiler :

result: 13 bonus hammers

result: 13 bonus hammers

result: 13 bonus hammers

Ok I know worldbuildering this up doesn't prove anything but this coincides pretty well with my experience in real game situations that I am unable to stare at a cities happiness numbers to determine what the bonus hammers will be.

 

[xAlephx]

To piggyback on Polycrates - priests do generate gold, but a more devastating comparison is the +3 research per sage (pre caste). Every point of research gained is a gold piece you can bank, which is in turn what drives gambling houses through the roof in comparison with any other way of generating happiness.

And whereas, if you ARE Philosophical and running Sacrifice the Weak, you have 2 free civics.

 

[Grey Fox]

You should post that in the Bug thread Vale. That post will probably get Kael to see what he has done wrong in the implementation.

 

[Vulcans]

did you play a turn?
some things in the game mechanics take a turn to update. maybe the bammers produced by govenors manor are updated every turn, so changing the city mid-turn will not update the production instantly mid-turn, but then the following turn the govenors manor might be re-calculated.