Using slavery effectively?

[AW Arcaeca]

So everyone seems to think that slavery is such an amazing labor civic, but how is it that you people manage to produce enough food for enough population growth to use slavery effectively early in the game, while still producing enough hammers to actually accomplish anything in your cities?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

So everyone seems to think that slavery is such an amazing labor civic, but how is it that you people manage to produce enough food for enough population growth to use slavery effectively early in the game, while still producing enough hammers to actually accomplish anything in your cities?

Prioritize city locations with good food resource in the inner ring.

Prioritize constructing a granary, which effectively doubles food->hammer conversion.

Prioritize targets over infrastructure/wonders

 

[Kid R]

Make sure all bonus tiles are improved. Start with the food ones and then you can save crucial worker turns at the start by not improving so many hammer tiles, since essential things like settlers and defenders can be built using slavery, which runs off food only.

 

[klonoklown]

a good read:

By VoU

 

[Olson]

So everyone seems to think that slavery is such an amazing labor civic, but how is it that you people manage to produce enough food for enough population growth to use slavery effectively early in the game, while still producing enough hammers to actually accomplish anything in your cities?

I believe every starting location has at least two bonus food tiles (ie. fish/cows/etc.).
With a granary and a 2 pop. city one can perform a 1 pop whip about every 4-6 turns. A 4 pop. city can do a 2 pop. whip then a 1 pop. whip in about 10 turns. If you've got 3-4 cities going, that can be a lot of early production especially if the Civ-specific or Leader-specific abilities compliment this (ie. China's Qin Shi Huang gets +50% on settler builds).

For the first 20-30 turns I only mine gold, copper, or iron and the rest is forest-chopped hills and whipping. I don't look at hammer count until after my first 3-4 cities are established (usually around 750BC-1AD) at Noble.

I generally only build granaries, libraries, forges, and barracks in these cities (in that order) in the first 100 turns or so. It doesn't require a lot of hammers to accomplish that as long as I have the pop. and one happiness source.

But what do I know...I started playing just two months ago.

 

[elmurcis]

When talk about food, you have to decide if city is able to support real slavery strategy (usually I want +4 or better food growth.. if thats slower than I whip only granary or some alert defense if someone attack)..
I try to whip with maximal overflow when I have reason to do it (for example whip 3-pop settler just 1 turn before it goes to 2-pop whip, than use max overflow to get work boat done in next turn to improve new city fish/crab/clam tile right away).
Also for me its usual strategy to whip 2-3 pop whip unit/building 1 turn before city grows up, so next turn city grows 1 pop up (for example whip library from 5 to 3, next turn its 4.. I build settler now to get of unhappiness off.. and when settler is done, I can grow up again and do this thing over and over).

 

[george547]

Good tactic, that--building, say, settlers or workers while the unhappiness wears off. Unhappiness was always the thorn in my side when considering the slavery civic.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

When talk about food, you have to decide if city is able to support real slavery strategy (usually I want +4 or better food growth..).

This is an interesting value to think about. You're right that more is always better. So, somehow, it's a bit futile to define a minimum value. Yet, 4 food surplus doesn't strike me as very functional.
A functional food surplus allows a city to grow a size within an acceptable timeframe.

The higher the city size, the higher the minimal food surplus. Size 4 and size 10 cities do not have the same requirements in food.

6 food surplus I find handy as a minimum that is both easily achieved and reasonably functional.



Since excess food overflows into the next pop, the numbers listed in "Turns to grow with food surplus X" describe a maximum value.
In the Ancient Era/with limited happiness, 8 food surplus is largely overkill for growth purposes only (settler/workers or specialists domain).

 

[Fippy]

So everyone seems to think that slavery is such an amazing labor civic, but how is it that you people manage to produce enough food for enough population growth to use slavery effectively early in the game, while still producing enough hammers to actually accomplish anything in your cities?

Why are fast workers horrible, but still somehow fast?
How do you use slavery, but still produce enough hammers?
How do i eat, but avoid being hungry?
Why am i still up, when i should be sleeping?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Why are fast workers horrible, but still somehow fast?
How do you use slavery, but still produce enough hammers?
How do i eat, but avoid being hungry?
Why am i still up, when i should be sleeping?

One of these things is not like the others
One of these things just doesn't belong
Can you tell which of these is not like the others
By the time I finish this song?

...

<3.

 

[Gwynnja]

So everyone seems to think that slavery is such an amazing labor civic, but how is it that you people manage to produce enough food for enough population growth to use slavery effectively early in the game, while still producing enough hammers to actually accomplish anything in your cities?

That's the great thing about slavery. It makes it so you no longer need the hammers as long as you have the food.

 

[ben-jammin]

Slavery allows you to get pretty good production out of cities with almost no hammers. You just need to use the hammer overflow from the last whop to get to the 3- or 2-pop whip threshold. Cities with no hammers other than the city tile and nothing but a granary, barracks, and forge (+stable if you're going mounted and had time to spare) can easily contribute over a thousand hammers worth of units in ~30 turns.

 

[Manco Capac]

Slavery is a must. Some people don't realize it, but it's a game equalizer. Not all players on a map start with a fair share of food and production in all city. Early game, there are few means/options to build/train, but slavery permits to make production-less cities productive. Try some rainforestmaps without a single hill and you'll finally understand why slavery is a game equalizer.

 

[slaze]

The whip is more hammers than:

a grass hill mine until pop 6,
a plains hill mine until pop 10,
an engineer specialist until pop 20

 

[TheMeInTeam]

a grass hill mine until pop 6

??? Nonsense. It is impossible to get a 1 to 3 conversion from the whip, the most efficient whip will be 1 into ~ 2.73 but in practice that isn't realistic since it implicates whipping from pop 2 --> 1. Usually, people 2 pop whip which is a slightly worse conversion rate.

The only reason you would even consider whipping a grassland mine away is that working a 6 corn rather and whipping > working a mine and either growing into or not working the better tile (IE any 4 or more tile). However for example if you have a pop 5 city that only has enough food to stagnate on 4 grassland hill mines and has done so, you'll never outproduce it by whipping, even with a granary.

Obviously if it's a situation like "inefficiently whip or lose the city, work boats, or something else that's worse than the inefficiency", then you'd whip anyway. But from a pure to conversion the whip literally can't beat a grassland mine unless you're simply working better tiles than it that give a huge food surplus.

The break point for plains hill mines is similarly not as late as you're saying.

 

[Fippy]

There's no break point or mine valuation for me, i whip when that makes more sense..
example, granary 2-pop whip at size 4.
2 good food tiles. Would i not whip now (at a good point for bin filling) because of the green mine?
Surely i would, with 2 good food tiles you will wait very few turns (and sometimes only 1) until you can use the mine again.

Honestly, these calculations often stop people from taking the better decision.
It's also quiet obvious that when you whip heavily (units for example), simple 3 food farms can be better than 1f 4h special mines for a short time. Math like that rarely works, use common sense.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

There's no break point or mine valuation for me, i whip when that makes more sense..
example, granary 2-pop whip at size 4.
2 good food tiles. Would i not whip now (at a good point for bin filling) because of the green mine?

Of course you'd whip as soon as you could. I already pointed out that prioritizing better tiles than a mine beats just working the mine. In this case, if you didn't whip you'd just grow into unhappiness and get stuck whipping anyway, and with a worse to ratio than with a granary due to its impact on regrowth.

You'd have to compare an additional tile against the nearly doubled to conversion of your best 2 tiles. Whipping that is going to win, even if the "conversion" is less there's simply more stuff. That's exactly why you do it.

Honestly, these calculations often stop people from taking the better decision.

Only if one does them improperly . If the city would struggle to grow into its or cap the whip might make less sense in your example, or rather you might wait until you ran out of mines if your *only* goal were to max production in that city and there were no other good cities to settle/capture sooner at all.

When it comes to planning though, things aren't that simple. You might whip away a pretty good tile so you can work 2 better ones (via settling) sooner, and that will easily come out ahead. In that case, you're not comparing working the mine in the current city to the whip, but rather working the mine in the current city to working a grassland cow and a copper mine in another city for example. Working those 2 tiles is more efficient than working a grassland mine.

It's also quiet obvious that when you whip heavily (units for example), simple 3 food farms can be better than 1f 4h special mines for a short time.

Interesting what you're saying here, and I bolded the pluralization for emphasis. If you sit at pop 1-->2 then whip forever, then for 3.67 turns you get nothing, then on the 4th turn you get 30 ...averaging out to 8.2 /turn from the tile over extended time. 1F 4H is "only" 6.7 /turn if you whip from pop 2 constantly.

But that ignores an important consideration: you can get more by working both and whipping from 3 --> 2 than by chain whipping 2 --> 1 from a single farm...unless you have even more tiles.

When you say "short time", you mean it. In this case the "long run" is quite close, so if you're whipping that 1F 4H tile away, there better be a pretty good reason (IE working an even better tile, or an imminent threat of some variety), because otherwise you'd just work it too and whip something less valuable.

IMO where people make a big mistake in these calculations is *opportunity cost* - specifically the potential gain from working a different and much better tile somewhere else. Planning for potential yield from all cities and potential cities in tandem is probably the hardest part of this game.

 

[Patchface]

So everyone seems to think that slavery is such an amazing labor civic, but how is it that you people manage to produce enough food for enough population growth to use slavery effectively early in the game, while still producing enough hammers to actually accomplish anything in your cities?

If you want to prioritize growth in order to work hammer/cottage tiles early while taking advantage of the whip then you will want to grow into unhappiness and whip those away. Watch some old TMIT videos where he does this. For example, with a non-CHA leader and no gold/gems/ivory/silver start, grow your capital into size 6/5 (unhappiness/happiness). You can 2 pop whip, overlow into whatever infrastructure you want to build. As you grow into unhappiness again, pause the build, queue a worker/settler, and repeat the cycleagain all while keeping your capital at max pop.

 

[Fippy]

Tmit, yep Food beats big mines for that short time i.e. if you grow back 1 turn faster, since now you can work 2 hammer tiles instead of 1 if you want, and your net gain would be the food.

Similar things can even be seen in videos sometimes, i.e. by Absolute Zero, if he takes off tiles like gold mine(s) for 1-x turns to grow on something like unimproved Flood Plains.
This example is obv. simpler as holding growth so early jumps out as annoying, but it's not much different from later when a bit more food worked gives an advantage over a mathematically better tile. It's just harder to notice.

 

[slaze]

Thought I saw McW say that somewhere, some time ago. Have no idea how to figure the math, even situation-ally; just use it as a concept when making those yes/no decisions.