6K Man
Bureaucrat
(Subtitle: If You Hate Micromanaging, You Might As Well Close This Thread Right Now)
When I see a deficit in my games, my first instinct is to react negatively – along the lines of “OMG, something is going wrong here”. Gradually, I’ve gotten better with running deficits beyond the usual cash deficit when one has a lot of stored gold, and I got to thinking…
Deficit types
Negative gold per turn to use up gold reserve This one we all know. Sometimes I tweak my research rate up to run a cash deficit so that I will finish a tech 1 turn sooner. As I get close to completing that tech, I can usually lower my research rate and return to a per-turn cash surplus. In this way, you maintain a bit of a reserve for emergencies and boosts toward subsequent techs.
Advantages: Tech faster, get key techs sooner.
Disadvantages: The temptation to run down to single digit cash reserves, right before a nasty event or some other circumstance that will make you wish you had some money.
Binary science/gold For simplicity’s sake, imagine a nation of one city that produces 20 commerce/turn, breaking even at a 50% research rate. The city is building a library which will finish in 10 turns. At that point, at a 50:50 gold:research ratio, the city will put out 12.5 beakers/turn. In 20 turns, therefore, the city will have produced 225 beakers and 200 gold.
However, if you shut down research for the 10 turns the library is being built, you can accumulate 100 extra gold in your reserve, 200 total. Now when the library is built, you can turn science to 100% for 10 turns. At the end of 20 turn mark, you have 200 gold (all produced in the first 10 turns) and 250 beakers (produced in the last 10 turns). That’s 11% more beakers by using the binary approach - better than being in Free Religion!
I find this trick works best with: a) first Library, b) first Academy, c) Oxford. Other buildings don’t often provide enough of an oomph to your science rate to make it worthwhile.
Advantages: More research in the long run.
Disadvantages: You’ll get more research, but later. If you are racing to some tech with a bonus attached (and they all have some kind of bonus attached), you’ll get there later, although you will get subsequent techs sooner.
Maintenance costs may go up, meaning that the gold you accumulated in the first 10 turns may not be enough to carry you through 10 turns at 100% research.
Reverse (building Markets/Banks/Wall Street): This is more rare, generally because Libraries are up and running long before Markets and an early Library will make more of a difference to your tech rate than a later Market will on your cash rate (discounting specialists). In addition, usually you aren’t in a position to go 0% gold for long without exhausting reserves. And finally, if you have a cash surplus big enough to make this an option, you’re probably already running a deficit. Still, it occasionally can be made to work.
Advantages:
There is less intrinsic value to cash (you need it for rush upgrades and events, usually), than there is to beakers (techs). If you front-load your research, you’ll get key techs sooner, and restore your bankroll later.
Can work really well if you have a Shrined holy city for a widespread religion, or corporate HQs.
Disadvantages:
You usually don’t have enough cash reserves to do this, and if you do, you probably have other purposes for the reserve.
Effect is usually diluted because you don’t usually build your first Market until your empire is fairly developed, so that Market won’t make as big a difference as your first Academy or Library would.
Binary Espionage: If you get Great Wall, pop and settle a GSpy, and look to be getting a second GSpy, you can do the same thing for espionage to even greater effect (a Scotland Yard has the best multiplier of all, +100%). Only Wall Street and Oxford compare, and they come much later. I can’t vouch for this one because I have never really run a true Espionage Economy and in fact, seldom touch my Espionage slider.
Binary Culture: May have some application with Hermitage, the Media Wonders/Broadcast Towers, or Cathedral variants. But if you are going for culture you go whole hog with the slider anyway.
Binary specialists: If you need a lot of either beakers or cash, running a food deficit (see Food) to run extra specialists in Caste System can be very useful. If you are about to finish a Bank in a GP farm, it can pay to run scientists before completion and merchants afterwards.
Advantages: You don’t need to touch the slider, you can just do this city by city. Your other cities aren’t affected unless you want them to be.
Disadvantages: GP pool pollution. Which can be a pretty big one.
Food – works best with slow-grow cities. Take a size 7 city working 4 grassland farms, 1 grassland hill mine, 2 plains hill mines, and has 3 other unworked plains hill mines. Produces 15 food, 12 hammers, and is one turn from growing to size 8. At size 8, the city will either stagnate, run a 1 food/turn deficit, or continue growing with a 1 food surplus and the same hammer output.
Now, assume you badly want wonder X or building Y in that city.
Stop working 3 of the grass farms, start working the three plains hill mines. Now the city is producing 24 hammers/turn, twice as many as before. You are now running -11 food/turn. But a size 7 city with 1 turn to go to size 8 has 33 food stored (50 on epic, and 67 on marathon). You can double your production for (stored food/food deficit) for 3 turns before the city will shrink. At which point, you have to do the slow regrowing again.
Advantages: Build whatever you are building, faster. Even bigger advantage if your food shortage is due to health issues and the building boosts health (e.g. Grocer, Supermarket, Recycling Centre), or the city has an unhappy citizen that the building will make happy (this presupposes you aren’t in a position to whip).
You’re converting food to hammers much like whipping, without that nasty unhappiness and population drop. Of course, it’s slower than whipping, but faster than otherwise. Call it a middle ground.
Food has no intrinsic value (unless you’re whipping, and you don’t whip slow-growth cities) – getting hammers faster, on the other hand, has a lot of value.
Disadvantages: Slows the growth of a slow-growing city even more (unless slow growth is due to unhealthy or an unhappy citizen, see above). Slower growth may not be as much of an issue if the city is large, at or near happy cap, or would grow onto undesirable tiles.
Not as worthwhile to try with a city that grows at a decent rate – it would generally be better in the long term, and maybe even the short term, to grow onto better tiles. Or run specialists, if you have no good tiles left.
Deficit military:
Now this is tricky. You almost always need exploring units, or fogbusters. You may need defenders if you have unfriendly neighbours. And you may need units for happiness in HR. But if you aren’t at war, units are just a waste of money and production. Even worse, if you don’t plan on warring in the early game, the units you build then are going to be useless when you finally are ready to go to war (barring expensive upgrades).
In theory (this probably works best when isolated, having the Great Wall, or being neighbours with Gandhi), you could neglect your military entirely and crank up your infrastructure. Now, this isn’t a license to become a ‘bad builder’ and put one of every improvement in each city. You still specialize each city, and build WHAT is appropriate for each, WHEN it is appropriate. Only when you’ve expanded peacefully as much as feasible, and built the appropriate improvements for each city, do you then focus on military and pick a victim.
Advantages: You get the multiplier buildings up sooner, you get the buildings that add health and happiness up sooner, and you ought to finally be able to get more than 1.5 workers/city.
Disadvantages: A slight miscalculation in your diplomacy could quickly cost you the game. But those of you who play on Immortal/Deity probably find this to be the case anyway.
Off the table if you are using Hereditary Rule, so probably only a really good trick if you are running Pyramids Representation.
When I see a deficit in my games, my first instinct is to react negatively – along the lines of “OMG, something is going wrong here”. Gradually, I’ve gotten better with running deficits beyond the usual cash deficit when one has a lot of stored gold, and I got to thinking…
Deficit types
Negative gold per turn to use up gold reserve This one we all know. Sometimes I tweak my research rate up to run a cash deficit so that I will finish a tech 1 turn sooner. As I get close to completing that tech, I can usually lower my research rate and return to a per-turn cash surplus. In this way, you maintain a bit of a reserve for emergencies and boosts toward subsequent techs.
Advantages: Tech faster, get key techs sooner.
Disadvantages: The temptation to run down to single digit cash reserves, right before a nasty event or some other circumstance that will make you wish you had some money.
Binary science/gold For simplicity’s sake, imagine a nation of one city that produces 20 commerce/turn, breaking even at a 50% research rate. The city is building a library which will finish in 10 turns. At that point, at a 50:50 gold:research ratio, the city will put out 12.5 beakers/turn. In 20 turns, therefore, the city will have produced 225 beakers and 200 gold.
However, if you shut down research for the 10 turns the library is being built, you can accumulate 100 extra gold in your reserve, 200 total. Now when the library is built, you can turn science to 100% for 10 turns. At the end of 20 turn mark, you have 200 gold (all produced in the first 10 turns) and 250 beakers (produced in the last 10 turns). That’s 11% more beakers by using the binary approach - better than being in Free Religion!
I find this trick works best with: a) first Library, b) first Academy, c) Oxford. Other buildings don’t often provide enough of an oomph to your science rate to make it worthwhile.
Advantages: More research in the long run.
Disadvantages: You’ll get more research, but later. If you are racing to some tech with a bonus attached (and they all have some kind of bonus attached), you’ll get there later, although you will get subsequent techs sooner.
Maintenance costs may go up, meaning that the gold you accumulated in the first 10 turns may not be enough to carry you through 10 turns at 100% research.
Reverse (building Markets/Banks/Wall Street): This is more rare, generally because Libraries are up and running long before Markets and an early Library will make more of a difference to your tech rate than a later Market will on your cash rate (discounting specialists). In addition, usually you aren’t in a position to go 0% gold for long without exhausting reserves. And finally, if you have a cash surplus big enough to make this an option, you’re probably already running a deficit. Still, it occasionally can be made to work.
Advantages:
There is less intrinsic value to cash (you need it for rush upgrades and events, usually), than there is to beakers (techs). If you front-load your research, you’ll get key techs sooner, and restore your bankroll later.
Can work really well if you have a Shrined holy city for a widespread religion, or corporate HQs.
Disadvantages:
You usually don’t have enough cash reserves to do this, and if you do, you probably have other purposes for the reserve.
Effect is usually diluted because you don’t usually build your first Market until your empire is fairly developed, so that Market won’t make as big a difference as your first Academy or Library would.
Binary Espionage: If you get Great Wall, pop and settle a GSpy, and look to be getting a second GSpy, you can do the same thing for espionage to even greater effect (a Scotland Yard has the best multiplier of all, +100%). Only Wall Street and Oxford compare, and they come much later. I can’t vouch for this one because I have never really run a true Espionage Economy and in fact, seldom touch my Espionage slider.
Binary Culture: May have some application with Hermitage, the Media Wonders/Broadcast Towers, or Cathedral variants. But if you are going for culture you go whole hog with the slider anyway.
Binary specialists: If you need a lot of either beakers or cash, running a food deficit (see Food) to run extra specialists in Caste System can be very useful. If you are about to finish a Bank in a GP farm, it can pay to run scientists before completion and merchants afterwards.
Advantages: You don’t need to touch the slider, you can just do this city by city. Your other cities aren’t affected unless you want them to be.
Disadvantages: GP pool pollution. Which can be a pretty big one.
Food – works best with slow-grow cities. Take a size 7 city working 4 grassland farms, 1 grassland hill mine, 2 plains hill mines, and has 3 other unworked plains hill mines. Produces 15 food, 12 hammers, and is one turn from growing to size 8. At size 8, the city will either stagnate, run a 1 food/turn deficit, or continue growing with a 1 food surplus and the same hammer output.
Now, assume you badly want wonder X or building Y in that city.
Stop working 3 of the grass farms, start working the three plains hill mines. Now the city is producing 24 hammers/turn, twice as many as before. You are now running -11 food/turn. But a size 7 city with 1 turn to go to size 8 has 33 food stored (50 on epic, and 67 on marathon). You can double your production for (stored food/food deficit) for 3 turns before the city will shrink. At which point, you have to do the slow regrowing again.
Advantages: Build whatever you are building, faster. Even bigger advantage if your food shortage is due to health issues and the building boosts health (e.g. Grocer, Supermarket, Recycling Centre), or the city has an unhappy citizen that the building will make happy (this presupposes you aren’t in a position to whip).
You’re converting food to hammers much like whipping, without that nasty unhappiness and population drop. Of course, it’s slower than whipping, but faster than otherwise. Call it a middle ground.
Food has no intrinsic value (unless you’re whipping, and you don’t whip slow-growth cities) – getting hammers faster, on the other hand, has a lot of value.
Disadvantages: Slows the growth of a slow-growing city even more (unless slow growth is due to unhealthy or an unhappy citizen, see above). Slower growth may not be as much of an issue if the city is large, at or near happy cap, or would grow onto undesirable tiles.
Not as worthwhile to try with a city that grows at a decent rate – it would generally be better in the long term, and maybe even the short term, to grow onto better tiles. Or run specialists, if you have no good tiles left.
Deficit military:
Now this is tricky. You almost always need exploring units, or fogbusters. You may need defenders if you have unfriendly neighbours. And you may need units for happiness in HR. But if you aren’t at war, units are just a waste of money and production. Even worse, if you don’t plan on warring in the early game, the units you build then are going to be useless when you finally are ready to go to war (barring expensive upgrades).
In theory (this probably works best when isolated, having the Great Wall, or being neighbours with Gandhi), you could neglect your military entirely and crank up your infrastructure. Now, this isn’t a license to become a ‘bad builder’ and put one of every improvement in each city. You still specialize each city, and build WHAT is appropriate for each, WHEN it is appropriate. Only when you’ve expanded peacefully as much as feasible, and built the appropriate improvements for each city, do you then focus on military and pick a victim.
Advantages: You get the multiplier buildings up sooner, you get the buildings that add health and happiness up sooner, and you ought to finally be able to get more than 1.5 workers/city.
Disadvantages: A slight miscalculation in your diplomacy could quickly cost you the game. But those of you who play on Immortal/Deity probably find this to be the case anyway.
Off the table if you are using Hereditary Rule, so probably only a really good trick if you are running Pyramids Representation.
