What to do with Financal/Floodplains

[UncleJJ]

Wodan, this technique using the carry over hammers from Slavery is a very powerful way to build wonders. Much faster than working inefficient tiles like plains hills.

The sequence I use in Warlords is something like this. Assume a high food city with say 10 base hammers from tiles and a food surplus of say +14 from floodplains, grassland farms and good food tiles. Assume the wonder has been building for a few turns and gets a bonus from stone

turn n: building wonder, 10 hammers + 25% OR + 25% forge + 100% stone = 25 hammers applied to wonder

turn n+1: build horsearcher, 10 hammers + 25% forge = 12 hammers (38 remaining)
turn n+2: (whip 2 pop to complete horsearcher = 60 hammers, + 10 hammers) = 70 base hammers. Note only 31 base hammers +25% forge completes horsearcher and 39 hammers overflow.

turn n+3 build wonder, Overflow 39 hammers, +10 hammers = 49 hammers , + 25% OR + 25% forge + 100% stone = 122 hammers applied to wonder.

The net effect of the three turn sequence n+1, n+2 and n+3 is to produce a useful unit = horsearcher and apply 47 more hammers to the wonder than normal at the cost of 2 pop. With a food surplus of +14 over 3 or 4 turns we can expect to regrow the 2 pop. Under HR the horsearcher offsets the unhappiness. This sequence can be applied 3 or 4 times to speed up wonder production. In 3 turns we are getting the equivalent of 5 turns of normal production so we can build a wonder in about 60% of the normal build time.

All numbers used above are from memory and might be slightly out.

 

[Murky]

I would go with cottages because of the health issue of growing too big too fast with flood plain sickness adding to the problem. Moving your capital is generally not a great idea unless the place you are moving to is better.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Interesting, VOU, I've never tried that. Let me make sure I understand. You start building a wonder, and then in the middle of it, you insert a military unit into the front of the queue (temporarily suspending the wonder). turn 2 you whip, between turns 2 and 3 the overflow goes to the wonder. During turn 3 you insert another military unit (and repreat). Correct? That generates a military unit every 2nd turn, plus applies the difference to the wonder.

It seems to me the benefit here is the military units, not the wonder. A production city will produce the wonder MUCH faster. Right?

OK, first notice that I was careful to be generic - if you want to be trying to build a wonder, you can apply the overflow hammers to that; but it could be anything - a forge, perhaps (you can whip a forge at size 8 easily enough, but whipping it at size 7 takes more work).

Second, incorrect. The overflow goes to the next item that you work on, not the next item in the queue. Lets assume that the city produces 1 hammer per turn, and at the beginning of the sequence there is no overflow available. We'll use an Axeman (35 ) as the unit we whip. What does the production bar tell us on each turn? On the turn where we put the Axe in the queue, it says we produce 1 hammer per turn. On the next turn, the Axe is at 1/35, and the production bar says 1 hammer per turn. Now we whip: the Axe is at 61/35, and the production bar says 1 hammer per turn. We hit end turn, and the city gives us another hammer, and produces the Axeman, and has 27 hammers of overflow. So on turn three, the production bar shows us 28 hammers per turn. The overflow hammers aren't applied to the wonder (or whatever) unless it is at the top of the production queue when we hit end turn. So the next military unit goes into the queue (with no overflow hammers available) on turn four.

So you are getting an effective production rate of 28 base hammers invested in your wonder every three turns, which is to say 9 hammers per turn; essentially the equivalent of running two plains mines and the city tile - except for the fact that you get all this extra military to play with (and pay for).

This is not nearly as quick as building the wonder in your irrigated corn and 5 mines production center; so using it when you are racing for the wonder isn't necessarily a great idea (on the other hand, if you lose the race, you've got all this military to go take it back - a variation on the Stone Thrower's Gambit).

Note that the math changes if you are whipping catapults instead of axes, and may also depend on whether or not you have a forge; the "effective base production" that you get will vary.

Other comments:

There are, to my knowledge, only two Great Wonders where it really matters to build them in the GP Farm: the Great Library (for the free scientists) and the Angkor Wat (for the specialist slots). Both of these are techs that the AI doesn't prioritize very highly, so you can likely manage it if you make the effort.

If you have an available production city, you can build the wonder in both locations (while the GP farm is working on the unit, the production city works on the wonder; while the GP farm is working the wonder, the production city does something else useful). This gives you the option of chickening out: finishing the wonder in the production city, converting the hammers at the GP farm to cash.



There's a OCC challenge over at Realms Beyond that features a single tile island with all the food you would ever want, and at least one player managed to build the Pyramids.



For what its worth, my idea of rolling the overflow along doesn't appear to make anything more efficient, unless you use the exploit, and maybe not even then. The math comes out wrong. So ignore that bit for the moment.

 

[Wodan]

Hmm. Thanks for the thoughts, both of you. I need to put some "bathroom" time into this. That is, otherwise unproductive mental time.

VOU: when I mentioned the wonder in the GP farm, I was thinking of the value of adding the GPP. Yes, a drop in the bucket compared to what the specialists are adding, but if you can manage to do a couple of wonders then they would add up.

Wodan

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

And I think this is a good place to metnion that if you compensate for heavy whippery by building the Globe Theatre, you are denying yourself the IW in your GP farm, which allows many late-game engineers (Kremlin and statute of liberty, anyone?).

OK, I missed this first time around (or you added it, whichever).

Ironworks in the GP farm is... something of a contradiction. It's not bad, by any means, but the tile improvements you want for Ironworks give you at most half a specialist, and the tile improvements you want for the GP farm give you no extra hammers, so you are rather pulling in two different directions here.

Also, note that if you are going to be settling your great people, the ones that generate hammers also generate something else that wants to be multiplied; if IW is combined with the National Epic, then it isn't combined with Wall Street (for example).

Furthermore, most of the late game wonders come during that period when police state is available. If you want the wonder, then you build it in a production city - no need to burn an engineer on it. Let's consider the statue of liberty. An Engineer in a size 20 city gives you 900 hammers. If that size 20 city is a production center, then you are going to be pulling in 60+ hammers per turn, base. That's 15 turns, and we haven't included basic improvements like a forge. 60+ hammers plus forge + Ironworks + copper (we've probably secured copper by this point, right? substitute the appropriate multiplier for the other wonders) is 195 hammers per turn. Woo hoo, the engineer saved us a whopping 5 turns.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

when I mentioned the wonder in the GP farm, I was thinking of the value of adding the GPP. Yes, a drop in the bucket compared to what the specialists are adding, but if you can manage to do a couple of wonders then they would add up.

If you can get it for free, sure - why not.

In terms of tradeoffs, you'll find my answer (or at least an indication of how I would answer) in another thread.

 

[Landmonitor]

Any more realistic non-special-case situation will be better for the FP. Either the city isn't already unhealthy, in which case the health penalty is even less relevant, or it's so unhealthy it can't grow. And again, I have explicitly acknowledged that as a special case.

Fair enough, but this special case of not being able to grow, or even of having most of your worked farmed FPs reduced to the same effective level as farmed grassland will always be reached at a lower population if your base unhealthiness level is high owing to too many FPs in the fat cross.

You're still giving up specialist turns to do so.


In an early game empire with few cities you don't HAVE a GPF. The concept only really becomes important post-Literature. And you're being inconsistent here - apparently you can't build units because you need buildings, but you CAN build wonders? Highly inconsistent. In the early game, a good future GPF site should be building settlers and workers, or whipping out more units than a hammer-based city can manage.


"Rich" in Engineers? Pyramids is the only early wonder that produces Engineers (Warlords not assumed). Later on you get the Hanging Gardens and Hagia Sophia, but those aren't early by any stretch of the imagination. And as you note, the Pyramids are iffy. So you've got maybe one.

To me, the hanging gardens are an early wonder, and on Monarch, if you have stone (big if I suppose), you have a good shot at the Great Wall, and typically the HG aren't too far away if you go down the writing path - and it's definetely good to get that extra health, especially if you're GP farm has a lot of flood plains. From this combination, I got an early engineer twice, which in both cases built the pyramids. Now in both of those cases I had a quarry, and they were both on Monarch, but the pyramids still weren't completed anywhere, and in both cases this just increased the early engineer momentum. Just going by what I've done.

As to the inconsistency, I like to put normal buildings and wonders in my GP farm. As someone who likes slavery, you obviously can't run caste system, so you'll need libraries/markets/temples. I tend to operate the same way (my other cities get whipped more). Thus, since I want to build wonders in my GP farm, but I also need buildings, I never have a chance to build units there unless it's an emergency.

This doesn't make any sense to me at all. I can't tell what you're trying to say here.

Just that with marble, you can easily get lots of artist wonders if you want them. Also that if you have the parthenon but also four other wonders, the effect of the +2 artist points will be diluted. That was pretty convoluted; I was in a hurry.

30 hammers, not 20 (standard speed). And the forge bonus applies to that, too. So one whip is equal to 7.5 turns on a plains hill mine.

It's a question of how many specialist turns you lose by different ways of producing hammers. By working two mined plains hills, you get 4 hammers per specialist turn lost. Whipping two specialists produces 60 hammers and results in an extra 4 food per turn. So, to equal the production from the whip, you need to work the hills for 15 turns total, losing 15 specialist turns. Let's suppose we whipped down to size 5. So, the city needs 13 food to grow back to size 6, and another 17 to grow back to 7. After 4 turns (8 specialist turns lost), it's back to 6, needs 14 more food, and has a remaining surplus of 2 food. So 7 more turns, for a total of 15 specialist turns lost. Therefore, we can see that the city needs to get up to size 8 before the hills break even. That's pretty late.

So, the whip is going to be doing much better in the critical early stages. Once you get big, it's doing almost as well.

That was a very good breakdown and didn't involve extreme examples. I didn't realize that whipping pushed out so many hammers. I also didn't realize that it multiplied through the forge (and presumably also through Bureaucracy/OR); I knew it multiplied through stone/marble if applicable. That's a very good analysis.

That's very interesting that once the city reaches a certain size (eight, apparently), it is a better choice, all considered, to go with mines, while before that the whip is clearly a better choice.... It's about momentum; once you get to a certain size, working some production tiles can outpace whipping (while having the additional bonus continuing to grow and not pissing people off). This would be even better if there was some copper or iron or horses around.

This discussion was great, and it will certainly improve my game, mostly because of a better understanding of whipping. I'm still not convinced that an ideal GP farm has no production squares, but I think we'll have to agree to diasgree on that one. I will also likely continue to try to combine the GP city with my GP farm. I simply cannot ignore the fact that wonders make GPPs.

 

[Landmonitor]

OK, I missed this first time around (or you added it, whichever).

Ironworks in the GP farm is... something of a contradiction. It's not bad, by any means, but the tile improvements you want for Ironworks give you at most half a specialist, and the tile improvements you want for the GP farm give you no extra hammers, so you are rather pulling in two different directions here.

Also, note that if you are going to be settling your great people, the ones that generate hammers also generate something else that wants to be multiplied; if IW is combined with the National Epic, then it isn't combined with Wall Street (for example).

Furthermore, most of the late game wonders come during that period when police state is available. If you want the wonder, then you build it in a production city - no need to burn an engineer on it. Let's consider the statue of liberty. An Engineer in a size 20 city gives you 900 hammers. If that size 20 city is a production center, then you are going to be pulling in 60+ hammers per turn, base. That's 15 turns, and we haven't included basic improvements like a forge. 60+ hammers plus forge + Ironworks + copper (we've probably secured copper by this point, right? substitute the appropriate multiplier for the other wonders) is 195 hammers per turn. Woo hoo, the engineer saved us a whopping 5 turns.

Interesting points, and I noticed the diminishing returns of Engineers late game as their availability increases. However, I typically like to build my wall street in a holy city that has a lot of cottages, and all my settled prophets (the merchants of course go to the GP farm) and not in my GP farm. Usually a good holy city will outbalance the merchants I can manage to settle, arguing against wall street in the GP farm.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Interesting points, and I noticed the diminishing returns of Engineers late game as their availability increases. However, I typically like to build my wall street in a holy city that has a lot of cottages, and all my settled prophets (the merchants of course go to the GP farm) and not in my GP farm. Usually a good holy city will outbalance the merchants I can manage to settle, arguing against wall street in the GP farm.

It's not clear that you understood, so I'll try again: a weakness in placing Ironworks in the GP Farm is that you can't combine Ironworks and WallStreet.

Which is to say, I like to arrange for a city to have two shrines, and then settle a lot of super priests in it, and configure the city for production, rather than commerce, by building lots of watermills and workshops. You get Shrine gold and prophet gold multiplied by Wallstreet, and workshop hammers, watermill hammers, and prophet hammers multiplied by the Ironworks. Because the gold sources aren't plot based, you aren't losing by configuring the city for hammers (compare with the NE + IW combo, where the plot improvements want to go different directions).

Your mileage may vary, of course.

 

[Landmonitor]

Alright, I get you. That's a nice maximization of the bonuses from a super priest too. If you had a few food resources (and maybe and Angor Wat Somewhere), you could throw in a few regular priests to good effect too if you were already working all the high production tiles. This city would hugely benefit from state property.

The only drawback to this is that you wouldn't have too many cottages to multiply their commerce through the Wall Street... which would only be a drawback if you were running a very low science rate. That's some nice national wonder stacking.

In most of my GP farms, I try to build wonders, as I pointed out before, and so the IW helps with this, and helps to produce engineers, which I like, by allowing so many of them as specialists (which has the nice side effect of adding production).

 

[Pantastic]

In more complicated situations (where irrigation is an issue, for example) there might be better answers, but when you have a choice "farm the lake, cottage the river" seems clear.

So you're agreeing with me that "If you're financial then putting farms on river tiles is almost criminally negligent," is a wrong rule and bad advice?

 

[Pantastic]

Plus Pantastic was suggesting farming floodplains and using cottages elsewhere. I doubt I would do this in the stated situation. It just doesn't seem to make sense.

No I wasn't, I was disagreeing with bad advice of "If you're financial then putting farms on river tiles is almost criminally negligent," not stating that you'd want to farm river tiles in this particular situation.

 

[Wodan]

Geez....

I had left this alone... Jim responded quite fine, when he said:

Why exactly do you think this; do you really think that skipping the +1 commerce during the short time it takes for a cottage to get to a hamlet is so incredibly terrible that it warrants this response? I can't see why you'd think skipping 20 or so science for more city growth is such a terrible decision that it should never be made, especially if your city is on a hill so won't chain irrigation.

I think he was using mild humour and exaggerating the point. Plus he was answering the question (GPP/commerce city) quite succintly. He mentioned irrigation, admittedly not labouring the point.

Plus I wouldn't build farms in this prime city location as it seems like it will grow fast enough and I would be damned if I was going to use it as a GPP Capital.

In addition to that, let me respond to you when you said,

It doesn't change the fact that his point was completely and utterly wrong. If I've got one square on a river and one off of a river as a financial civ, and I want to irrigate one and cottage the other, the only difference in picking one over the other is that if you cottage the river space, you get 1 more commerce during the short time it takes to grow a cottage into a hamlet. That's it, it's not some kind of sucker move that you should never do.

That's important, but that's not "it". i.e., That's not everything that matters here, by a long shot.

The real question here is what you want to work. Not only long term, but in the short term early game when +1 commerce is huge.

Let's talk about Financial a bit. In 3000 BC, +1 commerce for even 10 turns is nothing to sneer at, especially if you farm a river (instead of cottage) multiple times in the same city or other cities. Multiple times is what you're talking about -- you're asking for a general "rule" that can be applied across the board. So, that's a full tech, maybe two, that you're getting behind where you could be.

Yes, yes, farm lets you grow faster. But, that's long-term gains at the expense of short term. Getting research earlier is worth 2x the research later on, if not more. And the example here is floodplains. For grass river with no food resource and no floodplains, then I would probably do 1-2 farms, simply to achieve faster pop growth, so I can whip without cutting my own foot off.

Back to the river question.

If you're cottaging a river city with floodplains or a food resource, then one farm is all you need and/or want for irrigation, and sometimes not even that. 100% cottages (yes with the odd goldmine or rice field). Hills too I would probably put cottages though this is debatable as you probably won't be working much hill tiles until much later. Regardless, if for some reason you aren't using Slavery, then 1-2 hills get mines and/or non-river grass or plains (if any) get workshops.

I suspect if you disagree with the above, then you're doing one of the following:
1) not specializing the city (completely different debate)
2) not working the river first

So, I do think if you're Financial, then it's smart to cottage the river. If it's a floodplains river and/or you have a food resource, then I would only put 1 farm as needed for irrigation. That's it. I also think any leader (Financial or not) should cottage the river and work early cottages, the few exceptions noted above.

Wodan