Units pre-building

[Smote]

diz, to answer your question, sometimes this situation occurs:

You don't want population b/c of happiness
You don't want workers/units b/c of gold/demographics/etc
You haven't invented Research or Wealth yet

Thus, the opportunity cost of pre-building stuff is zero, when compared to producing nothing, and it is only advantageous.

You are correct, in that it if you need a worker, it is better to:

1. Build a worker
2. Build a unit

as opposed to

1. Pre-build a unit
2. Build a worker
3. Build a unit

However, the first situation does actually come up in games, especially for production-heavy cities, or on "quick" settings.

 

[diz2]

diz, to answer your question, sometimes this situation occurs:

You don't want population b/c of happiness
You don't want workers/units b/c of gold/demographics/etc
You haven't invented Research or Wealth yet

Thus, the opportunity cost of pre-building stuff is zero, when compared to producing nothing, and it is only advantageous.

You are correct, in that it if you need a worker, it is better to:

1. Build a worker
2. Build a unit

as opposed to

1. Pre-build a unit
2. Build a worker
3. Build a unit

However, the first situation does actually come up in games, especially for production-heavy cities, or on "quick" settings.

I didn't mean to imply it was always a bad idea. My point was just that there is an opportunity cost to sinking hammers into a pre-built unit. There may be times when that opportunity cost is quite low. Other times when it is high.

But generally in the early game it seems high. There is almost always something you want to build in the sort of city where you'd be pre-building that unit. And when you spend hammers pre-building that unit, you delay that other something by some number of turns.

Part of the cost of military is the gold maintenance cost, the other part is the diversion of hammers from other uses.

 

[Johnpecan]

I know this was a very common strategy in Civ4. Was a bit more useful there because you could mass queue a bunch of units and then switch into vassalage/theocracy and pump them out with promotions, without having to run the inferior civics all the time.

In Civ4 there existed hammer decay, meaning that if you don't put hammers into something after X turns, the hammers start to decay. Can anyone confirm or deny the presence of hammer decay in Civ5?

 

[Tabarnak]

I know this was a very common strategy in Civ4. Was a bit more useful there because you could mass queue a bunch of units and then switch into vassalage/theocracy and pump them out with promotions, without having to run the inferior civics all the time.

In Civ4 there existed hammer decay, meaning that if you don't put hammers into something after X turns, the hammers start to decay. Can anyone confirm or deny the presence of hammer decay in Civ5?

It's actually drop after a certain amount of time. After 10 turns on quick speed it drops at a rate of 1 hammer per turn and it's surely different on slower speeds.

I don't remember well in civ4 but i think you can lose all the production in 1 turn if you forget the item after some turns.

I think it's even more useful in civ5 because you build less things during the game and then the opportunity cost may be more interesting for some situations. For warmongers, unit maintenance can kills economy before you go on a rampage.

For example, if you delay for 10 turns on quick speed 2 units before a war, you can save a minimum of 20 gold depending of the era. Make this for a long period of time and from many cities and you can actually save a good amount of gold through the game.

 

[DaveGold]

In Civ4 there existed hammer decay, meaning that if you don't put hammers into something after X turns, the hammers start to decay. Can anyone confirm or deny the presence of hammer decay in Civ5?

yes..

 

[Slowpoke]

Not sure, but I'm pretty sure there is no science decay, so there may not be a production decay.

 

[Tabarnak]

Not sure, but I'm pretty sure there is no science decay, so there may not be a production decay.

No production decay can open a lot of exploiting strategies, making the game even more easier. I think it's natural to see production dropping after some turns. Pre-building has some limits.

Well it's better than having something completely disappeared in the building queue, without a warning.

But i'm wondering if this implementation exists since civ1. Can someone confirm this?

 

[MouseyPounds]

There are Global Defines for both unit and building decay. Pasting the relevant values from the Defines DB:

"BUILDING_PRODUCTION_DECAY_TIME","50"
"BUILDING_PRODUCTION_DECAY_PERCENT","99"
"UNIT_PRODUCTION_DECAY_TIME","10"
"UNIT_PRODUCTION_DECAY_PERCENT","98"

I assume that means that on standard speed Buildings start decaying 1% per turn after 50 turns and units 2% per turn after 10 turns but haven't actually tested to see if that's what the numbers mean. Unit hammers definitely do decay though; that much I have seen.

 

[HansA]

What happens if you let it pre build till 2 turns left, wait 9 turns and do another turn so it reaches 1 turn left.

Will it start back to 10 turns without losing any hammers?

Another "trick" is to start building a wonder in one city. Switch to building something else, and then finish the wonder in another city. You will get gold for the partially finished wonder that same as if the computer had beaten you to the wonder. This is useful in the early game if you have a city where you don't have anything to build as you wait for new techs (happens to me on slow marathon games often), but it doesn't have enough production to actually build the wonder. I switch to a new building or unit when the tech becomes available and build the wonder in the city where I had intended to built it with more production.

quote from another thread

are wonders also under the 50turns limit as buildings are?

and Mesix trick looks interesting, when you go for cultural victory and you have the policy to increase culture in the city who has a world wonder... if a certain city is low on production, you can have the capital for example start it, switch to anotehr building and have the city with low production finish it.

Never tried this, didn't know it was possible to do it. Will certainly try it in my next game.

 

[Trik]

You could build a wonder to one turn then GE it in another city to get some money. probably better to get money though.

 

[tommynt]

sry Tabernalk as much as i appreciate other ideas from you this one is just bad:
There are 2 options:
a) you need a unit
b) u dont need a unit
wasting hammers on a option c) I might need a unit is just wasting hammers

sure if you f.e. want build up a army and got only 1 cities to produce units from you might choose to produce 3 units to 1 turn to finish all in 3 turns
But in 99% of games it ll just be better to build a unit use it (let it gain exp and kill stuff) --> build next unit --> use it

If you build units to have em stand idle you are doing it wrong
also I am pretty sure that your edit 2 is just plain wrong:
If u say f.e. prebuild spear then change to swords while researching civil Service - the spearpreproduction will be lost .... as soon as you switch to pike it ll start at 0.
you only keep the hammers for a unit you built atm - as you cant chain anymore as you could in civ4

 

[KiffeLesBiffles]

also I am pretty sure that your edit 2 is just plain wrong:
If u say f.e. prebuild spear then change to swords while researching civil Service - the spearpreproduction will be lost .... as soon as you switch to pike it ll start at 0.
you only keep the hammers for a unit you built atm - as you cant chain anymore as you could in civ4

Yes, you lose your production unless you ARE building the old unit when the new unit becomes available. I look at it to optimize landknescht rush.

 

[Tabarnak]

sry Tabernalk as much as i appreciate other ideas from you this one is just bad:
There are 2 options:
a) you need a unit
b) u dont need a unit
wasting hammers on a option c) I might need a unit is just wasting hammers

This is an old thread so from many months passed to study this path there is not much room for good uses of this trick. Not much use for mp games because you can struggle with unit movements if you unleash your virtual units when attacked. If you lose your city you lose everything inside.

The principle behind this idea is how can you make a good use of maintenance saving and lurking ennemy in sp games. If you get the idea, you can :

-Wait and want to be attacked, pre build 2-3 units for each cities while staying very low in soldiers. If the AI attacks, just finish your 2-3 units in each cities in 2-3 turns and strike hard(high benefit).

-Save money for upgrade by building an almost obsolete unit. Hammers will be transfered for the next unit available(don't switch or you gonna lose hammers. Low benefit).

-Pre build buildings like barracks for maintenance saving. Pre build 2-3 units after that and build everything at once(low benefit).

-This one is tricky. You can start units requiring a ressource before hooking them. You need at least a ressource to do this. Let's say you have 2 iron in your territory and want to catch 2 more from another place. You have 4 cities. You have 2 swordmen close to be finished in 2 cities. Stop production, then start 2 more swordmen from 2 other cities. You now have virtually 4 swordmen in your cities and still have 2 iron. Connect the other 2 iron tile then finish all your swordmen in 1 turn(no really benefits, just a funny thing).

But i want to be clear...there is nothing particulary strong in these approaches maybe excepted the first point about DoW provocation and defensive games.

You don't ''waste'' hammers tommy. You just delay production for maintenance saving and serve for AI provocation. You can waste some if you don't watch carefully but this can be bypassed if you throw some hammers before decay. But i repeat, this thing is not very useful because like you said you want something now and not later in most cases.