[R&F] What’s up with Serfdom?

[acluewithout]

What’s up with Serfdom?

I’m working on a mod, and was going to tweak how builder charges work. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised I didn’t really understand how builder charges work.

See. You start with Ilkum, and a 30% building builders, and three charges. You can build builders with gold but no discount and no extra charges.

Then it flips at Surfdom. You lose the 30%, but now you have two extra charges and that carries over to gold (or faith) purchases.

My maths here is probably wrong, but with ilkum you’re paying 12 per charge and with Serfdom you’re paying 10 (ignoring builder waves and cost inflation etc).

Why is the game like this?

Here’s something interesting...

Despite what I said earlier about my love (more like compulsion) to micromanage, I'm actually OK with the policy card min/maxing that you and TMIT mentioned. Sure, I sometimes have an obsessive twitch about whether I'll get more out of an adjacency card or a buildings card, but if it's close enough that I'd need to do the math, it means that I'd get a pretty decent bonus either way and just pick one. The AI is poor at development/progression at deity and I can always slingshot ahead of them if I use these bonuses with proficient but not necessarily optimal planning.

My problem with the policy card setup is the "one and done" cards that you can use for a single cycle (i.e. until you hit the next opportunity to change the cards) and then be done with them. Most notorious is the pro army upgrades, but there are several others as well:

Professional Army: save up some cash, pick an outdated civic to research that will take you one turn to complete, upgrade all units and switch back.
Colonization: switch to this policy after beating up your nearest neighbor, switch production in all cities to settler, double the size of your empire.
Serfdom: pre-build a builder in all cities until one turn remains, switch to something else. When many (or all) of your cities are there, switch to this, then switch back.
Public Transport: select this policy, pick a site in each city for a neighborhood (don't even need to finish), switch back. Gain 50g X your number of cities.
Land Surveyors: save up some cash, pick an outdated civic to research that you can complete in one turn, buy all the tiles in all cities that help you, switch back.
Veterancy: when a new encampment building becomes available, switch production in all your cities (with an encampment) to it, then remove the card when complete.
Limes: same as above, now that walls provide tourism, this can be a powerful tourism boost for wider empires.

Using these tactics are very powerful, but make you feel that, to some degree, you're cheating the system. Particularly the Colonization trick- just about every game, I found my capital, build one settler for a second city, beat up my nearest neighbor for my 3rd to 5th city, and then (once the new cities are developed a little) expand to 10 cities before turn 80 or so.

...the first 2 or 3 builder waves you do successfully are fun. After that, it feels like needless tedium.

Is the jump to serfdom just about lowering the cost of builders further because you have more advanced techs?

Or, maybe it’s so you can concentrate builder production in high production cities given increasing cost inflation? Serfdom works great with Liang - just buy a 6 charge builder every turn.

Or, is it so you can boost builders from other sources, given ilkum only boosts builders built with hammers?

This gets even more confusing when I start thinking about goddess of the harvest and magnus, which change the value of builders making they’re chops more valuable than their improvements.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

Well, early on three builder charges means a tremendous boost to your empire, but building one takes an enormous amount of your resources. The bonus isn't nearly so strong but it can still have an impact because it comes so early. As your empire expands it would be tedious to manage 3 charge builders even if they were dirt cheap. I think that's also the reasoning behind Liang's bonus. He isn't usually one of my first picks but being able to make 6 (or more) charge builders improves my quality of life in the mid-to-late game.

 

[Ferocitus]

Holding off on some civics can be very helpful.
For example, if you think you need 3 or 4 builders, then wait until the civic
takes, say, 4 turns to complete. Each turn knock out a 6 charge builder and
then, after you have the civic, replace the +2 charge card with another one.

Sometimes it's worth part-completing a civic to get into that position and to
minimise the time you have the +2charge card in play without using its benefits.
There are several other similar situations with other cards and civics that are
worth fiddling around with.

 

[UWHabs]

Well, early on three builder charges means a tremendous boost to your empire, but building one takes an enormous amount of your resources. The bonus isn't nearly so strong but it can still have an impact because it comes so early. As your empire expands it would be tedious to manage 3 charge builders even if they were dirt cheap. I think that's also the reasoning behind Liang's bonus. He isn't usually one of my first picks but being able to make 6 (or more) charge builders improves my quality of life in the mid-to-late game.

Yes and no, though. While having 6 charge builders is nice to have less to move around, often times I find myself not needing that many. For example, if I have a new city, I can use 4-5 charges on, say, 2xchopping, plus 2-3 improvements. But more than that means I either need to park the builder there for the borders to grow, buy some tiles, or I move him around to another city to deal with. And then once the basic infrastructure is down, most of the time I would almost rather just have maybe 3 charges on a builder to "finish off" the improvements needed, and use the other 3 charges for another city somewhere else.

Of course, on the flipside, if I've neglected my infrastructure, then those 6 charge builders are a godsend. It means I can chop a couple things, plop down a farming triangle, and still have a charge or two left to improve another resource or ship off to another city.

As for why they work like they do, you'd think it would make more sense to have the 3 builder charge cards as "+30% to builders", "+30% and +1 charge", and "+30% and +2 charges", since this is the rare bonus that doesn't get strictly better as you move up the policy tree. It would also make it not as stark a jump to slot in the builder card, or to pre-build them.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

As for why they work like they do, you'd think it would make more sense to have the 3 builder charge cards as "+30% to builders", "+30% and +1 charge", and "+30% and +2 charges", since this is the rare bonus that doesn't get strictly better as you move up the policy tree. It would also make it not as stark a jump to slot in the builder card, or to pre-build them.

Yes, that progression would be more logical, but it's not the only time you lose one policy card to have it replaced by something similar but a bit different.

The math behind these cards was done pre-Liang and not changed, even though most of your builders will now be created with a base 4 charges instead of a base 3. If you're Qin or have the pyramids, the relative benefit of the two changes again.

For the most part, speaking simply, the +30% is better when hard building, the +2 builder charges is better when buying, being able to string them together to build a wave of builders at +30% and then finish them with the +2 builder charge is an organizational feat likely worthy of some benefit, but reduced somewhat now that most of that wave will come online without Liang's +1.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Feudalism comes at around the time monumentality and ancestral hall. That's basically it.

Or, maybe it’s so you can concentrate builder production in high production cities given increasing cost inflation?

And that too. Quality > Quantity.

 

[NukeAJS]

Without doing any calculations, I think your math might be a bit off because each completed builder raises the cost of the next builder. I might be wrong, but it's +5 production for the next builder and it starts at 50. So it's 55 for the second, 60 for the third etc. Let's assume that you've built ten builders before the serfdom card comes up, that'd be between 30 and high 30s builder charges total (depending on if you're China OR got Liang early, we'll leave the pyramids out of this). I think that's a fairly reasonable amount of builders to make given the time period that serfdom comes up and the fact that you've probably stolen a couple of builders

So, that means that our 11th builder is 105 production for 3 builder charges (no policy); 70.35 production for 3 builder charges (with ilkum); or 105 production for 5 builder charges (with serfdom). Per charge you're getting 35 production per charge (no policy); 23.45 production per charge (with ilkum); or 21 production per build charge with (with serfdom).

A couple of notes here: serfdom works with gold and ancestral hall (or faith if you've monumentality) but ilkum offers nothing towards these 3 other ways of obtaining builders.

The slight builder charges to production ratio is arithmetic and actually make +% production to builders better at around your 17th builder (I eyeballed that, it might be ... probably is wrong). That's kind of a moot point because you're basically forced into using serfdom by your 17th builder unless you're not making any monuments but tons of cities.

It might be more advantageous to have two 3 charge builders sooner rather than two 5 charge builders slightly later (sending them different directions, a little bit of chopping, repairs), or two 5 charge builders but slightly later (underdeveloped cities, lots of chopping, nothing to repair).

To me, serfdom working with ancestral hall, gold, and faith give it a huge advantage over ilkum. Maybe if you could choose to produce units with yields other than production, a case could be made for ilkum not becoming obsolete. But ilkum being better than serfdom is such a narrow, situational window.

 

[UWHabs]

Also keep in mind if you're getting 5 charge builders, you need less of them. If you get 3 5-charge builders at full cost rather than 5 3-charge builders at 30% off, even if it's only a little bit cheaper for those 15 charges (~330 vs ~360 using the numbers above), it also means that every other builder over the rest of the game is 10 hammers cheaper. Never mind what was mentioned elsewhere (free charges apply to bought/free builders, but production bonus doesn't apply to them).

 

[isau]

NukaAJS is correct about the calculation being fairly difficult because each Builder you complete increases the cost of the next Builder, for the rest of the game. It's because of this that any ability that provides Builder charges is actually stronger than it looks. For example, China with its +1 charge per Builder needs only 3 Builders to reach 12 total charges, where another player needs 4 Builders. The production cost to reach that fourth builder is higher than the individual cost of 3. Builders uses a COST_PROGRESSION_PREVIOUS_COPIES parameter of 4, which I believe means +4% increase in Builder cost per Builder (don't quote me on the math tho).

If you manage to reach 6 chargers per Builder you're building half as many Builders and the rate of incline is half normal.

 

[XplosiveLun]

TL;DR Serfdom is fine. It is an upgraded version of Ilkum. It also makes Ancestral Hall / Colonization / Magnus more powerful.

Serfdom (+2 builders charge) provides an alternative way to boost builders unlike its predecessor (+30% on builders) which can be useful in some other ways. I would like to add that Serfdom combining Ancestral Hall is good. With this strategy, you get a FREE builder upon settling a city. You can either improve the newly found city or use the remaining charges for older cities. You would not need production to make any new builders (except the settler, of course, but founding cities is always rewarding). Even better, combining Colonization (+50% on settler), Ancestral Hall, and Magnus (Settler doesn't consume population) you get +100% on settlers in the capital and high population to continuously churn out settlers. This is particularly useful for Colonist leaders, i.e. Vicky, Harald...

 

[acluewithout]

Hmm.

Some (hopefully) related thoughts. I had previously posted about how Civ doesn’t make mid to late game expansion attractive. But I wonder if good old Serfdom had been directed at that problem right from the start, and whether some of the new mechanics also maybe move the needle a little more too.

Also, I’d said in my OP that I was ignoring cost inflation to keep things simple, but I think cost inflation may be really core to what Serfdom is about. Basically, I think Serfdom is directed at offsetting cost inflation.

This is my thinking. So, you start the game cranking out a few builders to boost your core cities. The city that builds the buildings is basically also going to use that builder. Those original core cities will also have no trouble building districts etc. Your empire grows. All good.

Then you try expanding in the mid and maybe late game. These new cities will struggle to build builders and districts because of cost inflation. Loyalty is also a problem, as small cities don’t have the pop or production to deal with expansion. But with Serfdom, your original core cities can now better support those other cities to provide improvements and chops, or you can buy them in those small cities using gold (that might be why serfdom drops the production bonus - so production, gold and faith become equivalent).

Serfdom now also can synergise with Ancestral Hall and that Golden Age dedication that lets you buy builders with faith, but also that dedication that gives you four pop on settling (bc you don’t need to chop for pop).

Hmm.

All this is sort of why I get a bit down on Spain and England’s loyalty bonuses. They’re just sort of irrelevant to enabling you to settle on foreign continents given the existing mechanics help mid and late settling so much already. Builders are the best tool for dealing with loyalty because they let you chop for pop, or even chop in an Entertainment Complex if you’re so minded. Combine that with the other bonuses, and it is even more possible to settle mid game.

...but still probably not worth the effort because of the overall limited returns from doing so. ...

Hmm.

Something else to think about maybe is how much you should link doing certain sorts of things to getting the right golden age dedication. Like, maybe you really should only expand aggressively once you have that settlers start with 4 pop dedication.

Other than an initial expansion wave and then a builder wave, I don’t tend to really play in “waves”. I just get to stuff when I get to it, trying to be efficient, until I get to the real “end game”. But maybe I should play in waves more, focusing on doing particular things in particular eras. It would actually be much easier to do if I could force dark ages more reliably - they’re so good for building your economy, although terrible for expansion of course.

...well, this a rambling post...