What to do with Financal/Floodplains

[Landmonitor]

I reread the first post, and I don't think my long-winded criticism of "too many FPs" applies to 7 flood plain squares in one city.

I was thinking of more than that; in that game I described it was a lot, it really was a lot of flood plains; too many of them. I'd probably turn a 7-FP city into a GP farm too.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

The beautiful thing about Financial is that with the +1 commerce on tiles with two or more commerce is that you can get MORE out of your city production and population wise while keeping up to par with commerce in your city.

I would do a math crunch and see how many cottages you would need to build w/o financial to get the same amount w/ financial and then use the rest of those tiles for farms. This way, you have a surplus amount of food along with a great income (much earlier than without financial meaning you get more in the long run as well) so you can whip and run a GPF.

The extra farms will help bring in those scientists, artists, priests, or engineers to crank out those GP's.

Personally, if you have a BFC like that and are financial, you shouldn't abuse financial. Instead, you should use the bonus to get the equivalent of other towns and then ABUSE the farms so you can run a massive GPF/Commerce town. What I like to do is turn on Commerce and fill my town with engineers and priests and let the hammers turn into more cash. This way, you get an added bonus to cash as well as your GPF.

 

[Pantastic]

As to the first one, I disagree with your "untrue" since you'll hit the health cap

The problem is that there's generally no such thing as a health cap, there's a food minus unhealthiness cap. Unhealthiness doens't stop you from running specialists, only a lack of food does. If you take city A with some grasslands, then replace 3 of those with flood plains in city B, city B will be able to support 1 more speciaist than A even though it will get a green face more sooner than A.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

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.

The river tile has free commerce of its own - so I want to arrange my improvements so that I'm working the river tile most of the time. In a commerce city, that will normally mean I want my cottages on the river. Simple math, that.

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.

 

[cabert]

with a farm, it's +1 food.
with a cottage it's +2 commerce immediately (much more later).
i can see why you would farm 1 FP to chain irrigate, but more than this is, well, too many

About unhealthiness, I don't second the general statement "they cost you 0,4 food, and give you 3, so they're always better than grassland".
Why?
Because they give you food when you work them, but cost you food even when you don't!
I've seen (screenshot here on the forum somewhere) a city stagnant at size 1 because of too many FP. This problem becomes a non problem if you manage to grow, though (you can work the FP to get the food back).

 

[Beamup]

As to the first one, I disagree with your "untrue" since you'll hit the health cap much earlier when you don't have a variety of food sources/health buildings, so your ealy GP city will certainly grow fast, but it won't be able to support any specialists, because the city will be too sick. Such a city will be better as a whipping city for troops/libraries (depending on peace or war). This will end up hitting you hard because the earlier a GP comes out, the more their ripple effects will help you through time.

FP-based GP farms are awesome, but not when there is an extreme number of FPs without any forest, because you simply need too many food resources before the health cap hurts you. Also, you said 0.4 unhealthy per square, but that is per square in the city; not per square worked. I started on the western edge of a Great Plains map in the middle of a whole pile of FPs, one of which had corn (!!!), but it would have been a terrible GP farm because (on monarch with a non-expansionist Civ) it hit the health cap at 2; 3 with the corn connected.

In short, with regard to your first point, FPs are an excellent, arguably an essential, component of a good GP farm, but there is an optimum number of them, and over this number is just as bad as below it in the short term, and this is only partially alleviated later, since no matter how many health resources you get, there will still be more unhealthy faces from the FP penalty that you'd have if there were fewer of them.

Completely wrong. Yes, you'll hit the health cap faster. But that means absolutely nothing because, even AFTER losing food to unhealth, you will still have more.

A simple example to illustrate:

Suppose I have 10 FPs and 10 grass. I've got -4 health from FP total, and we'll assume the population is big enough that it would be unhealthy even without the FPs. Total surplus food (pre-Biology) is 2*10 + 1*10 = 30. Minus the 4 unhealth is 26 surplus food, for 13 specialists.

Whereas if I have 6 and 15, that's -2 health and 2*6 + 1*14 = 26 surplus. Minus the 2 unhealth is 24 surplus food, for 12 specialists.

So I've got more specialists, and hence more food, with the FPs. What if it goes up to 15 FPs? Then it's -6 health, 35 food, so 29 food and 14.5 specialists.

The more FPs you have, the more GPP you can generate, so long as the unhealth isn't so bad you can't grow at all (in which case it is a completely useless city, but that situation is almost unheard of). This is a fact. The health cap is completely different than the happy cap - going past it really doesn't hurt very much. Each extra pop only costs 3 food instead of 2, that's all. You should not be afraid to go past it.

As to the second "untrue," I disagree totally; you may get the bulk of your GPP from specialists, but every wonder is 2/3 of a specialist and any decent GP farm will have a few; I try to build all of my wonders in the GP farm. Anywhere else seems counter productive. I believe that a real GP famr should have a few plain hills to work in lieu of a specialist in order to build wonders. This not only gives you MORE great people but also lets you tailor what kind of great people based on the wonders you build...

Again, completely wrong. Each hill you have and work loses you a specialist. Which means that you have to build more wonders than you have hills to come out ahead - which is just not going to happen.

Also, building wonders in the GPF makes it HARDER to tailor the GP you get, since you can't turn off their GPP generation. Build the Parthenon in the GPF, and you will be getting more Artists, whether you want them or not.

In the final analysis, you may want some wonders in the GPF, sure. Especially the GL, but also the GE-producing ones. That's not many. And those you can easily build with the whip - in fact, you can do so more easily than with hammers.

Only if you let your resources drive your GP generation, which is a very bad idea. Especially since the most common GPP from wonders are Artists and Prophets, which typically aren't the most desirable.

Anyway, specializing the GP output aside, having production in your GP farm will also pump up the numbers of GP appearing, not to mention whatever benefit the wonder itself gives being a nice "side effect" to its GP help.

First, except for the GL and the culture benefits of the modern happy wonders, it really doesn't matter much where you build them. You'll get about the same benefits from putting them in a production city, so the "side effect" really doesn't wash.

Second, as I said, putting production and lots of wonders in your GPF REDUCES your GP production and your ability to specialize that output, respectively.

Also, I would NEVER rely on whipping to build wonders; I'm loathe to whip in GP farm period, its just completely counter productive unless it's to control unhealthiness, but that should never be a problem anyway because if you watch the city closely, you can just assign more specialists to keep the population from growing.

First, whipping anywhere is hugely powerful, and especially so in a GPF. It's a hugely better way to produce stuff than using hammers in a high-food city. So not whipping the GPF is just bad. And while I also won't directly whip wonders (since they cost twice as much), I WILL use whip overflow to build them, which works very well.

Second, "whipping to control unhealth" is a bad idea in its own right because you don't need to worry about controlling it like you do happiness. Going unhealthy really doesn't hurt anything. Stopping growth to avoid unhealth is just pointless. Completely.

Anyway, I didn't expect to type that long, but I strongly disagree with your take on things, although I look forward to seeing how you'd argue against what I said in this post.

If you actually had the least tiny bit of a case, it would have been harder.

 

[cabert]

Completely wrong. Yes, you'll hit the health cap faster. But that means absolutely nothing because, even AFTER losing food to unhealth, you will still have more.

A simple example to illustrate:

Suppose I have 10 FPs and 10 grass. I've got -4 health from FP total, and we'll assume the population is big enough that it would be unhealthy even without the FPs. .

this assumption is defeating the purpose on demontration.
This is very level dependant, but I have seen situation where my jungle/floodplains city was unhealthy right from the start = losing food.
You can still grow and overcome the health cap by working farmed flooplains for a start.
Still, it's a pain, and you better take the unhealthiness into account.

 

[JimT]

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.

Remember the example was 7 floodplains. You ain't going to be working the other tiles for a while. In the meantime you would gain one food through irrigation. Your growth is going to be pretty good anyway with two surplus from your city and another from each flood plain worked.

You lose at least two commerce per turn,

farm on river (financial) = 1 commerce (1 from riverside)
cottage on river (financial) = 3 commerce (1 from river, 1 from cottage & 1 from financial).

You also slow the cottages growth which hinders commerce later on.

 

[cabert]

Remember the example was 7 floodplains. You ain't going to be working the other tiles for a while. In the meantime you would gain one food through irrigation. Your growth is going to be pretty good anyway with two surplus from your city and another from each flood plain worked.

You lose at least two commerce per turn,

farm on river (financial) = 1 commerce (1 from riverside)
cottage on river (financial) = 3 commerce (1 from river, 1 from cottage & 1 from financial).

You also slow the cottages growth which hinders commerce later on.

why wouldn't you work other tiles?
it may have some gold!

 

[JimT]

why wouldn't you work other tiles?
it may have some gold!

Good point

Podraza didn't mention it though and you would have thought he would. I would be bragging with 7 floodplains and gold in my fat cross

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.

I would consider working mines as cities can generally use hammers even if they seem to be a whippers paradise like this one. I would generally work resources as well for obvious reasons.

JT

 

[cabert]

If health is not a problem, you really should cottage those FP asap. One famr can help chain irrigating + growing faster, but that should be enough + it's even enough to work a mine.

 

[JimT]

If health is not a problem, you really should cottage those FP asap. One famr can help chain irrigating + growing faster, but that should be enough + it's even enough to work a mine.

Agreed.

I think he mentioned it was his starting location so its going to be a while before he's chaining irrigation.

I wouldn't even bother with one to work a mine. By the time you hit pop 4 you can work three floodplains and a mine while still having 3 surplus food. Personal choice though, I just wouldn't want to waste that much research in the early game. If I had 1 gold/gems/silver I would reconsider but probably not change my mind. If I had 2 then you might see those farms going down.

I'm off my lunch now so I will leave you with the last word.
I'm beginning to feel guilty about bumping this post up to the top when it is referring to such a specific situation which Podraza has clearly moved on from.

 

[Landmonitor]

Well, here we go. I have to say I'm enjoying this.

Completely wrong. Yes, you'll hit the health cap faster. But that means absolutely nothing because, even AFTER losing food to unhealth, you will still have more.

A simple example to illustrate:

Suppose I have 10 FPs and 10 grass. I've got -4 health from FP total, and we'll assume the population is big enough that it would be unhealthy even without the FPs. Total surplus food (pre-Biology) is 2*10 + 1*10 = 30. Minus the 4 unhealth is 26 surplus food, for 13 specialists.

Whereas if I have 6 and 15, that's -2 health and 2*6 + 1*14 = 26 surplus. Minus the 2 unhealth is 24 surplus food, for 12 specialists.

So I've got more specialists, and hence more food, with the FPs. What if it goes up to 15 FPs? Then it's -6 health, 35 food, so 29 food and 14.5 specialists.

The more FPs you have, the more GPP you can generate, so long as the unhealth isn't so bad you can't grow at all (in which case it is a completely useless city, but that situation is almost unheard of). This is a fact. The health cap is completely different than the happy cap - going past it really doesn't hurt very much. Each extra pop only costs 3 food instead of 2, that's all. You should not be afraid to go past it.

This is an idealistic situation. A city with a population of 33 (for the 13 spealist example) will always have health problems apart from the FPs(unless you are accessing every food resource and/or are on a very low difficulty). Thus, you won't be able to grow enough to work all those squares to gain all those specialists anyway. I'm considering a more realistic situation here.

Again, completely wrong. Each hill you have and work loses you a specialist. Which means that you have to build more wonders than you have hills to come out ahead - which is just not going to happen.

The idea is to work the hill temporarily while building wonders and resume specialist after. If you are spiritualistic and post-philosopy you can alternate between OR/Pacifism to really optimise this approach.

Also, imaging a realistic scenario without a ton of cities; it would be folly to try building units in your GP farm, since you need buildings to make non-caste system specialists and since you to take % advantage of the scientists and merchants. So you need to build units elsewhere (in an early game empire with few cities) ergo, your wonders should be in the GP farm where they will help make GPs.

Also, building wonders in the GPF makes it HARDER to tailor the GP you get, since you can't turn off their GPP generation. Build the Parthenon in the GPF, and you will be getting more Artists, whether you want them or not.

In the final analysis, you may want some wonders in the GPF, sure. Especially the GL, but also the GE-producing ones. That's not many. And those you can easily build with the whip - in fact, you can do so more easily than with hammers.

Only if you let your resources drive your GP generation, which is a very bad idea. Especially since the most common GPP from wonders are Artists and Prophets, which typically aren't the most desirable.

First, except for the GL and the culture benefits of the modern happy wonders, it really doesn't matter much where you build them. You'll get about the same benefits from putting them in a production city, so the "side effect" really doesn't wash.

Second, as I said, putting production and lots of wonders in your GPF REDUCES your GP production and your ability to specialize that output, respectively.

Early wonders are rich in Engineer GPP producing wonders, all the more reason to build them (do we need to debate that engineers are the best GPs?...). This in turn leads to even more wonders since once you build a forge in a GW/HG, and dare I say... pyramids (if you're lucky) city, you'll be hammering out engineers like crazy (I've had a surplus of three of them on Monarch before using this approach). Further, you specialize your output by not building too many marble wonders (which does suck if you have lots of marble, but if that's the case... you can just go for a culture victory). I'm not saying that you should let resources dictate your purchases, but you'd be foolish to ignore them. And at any rate, the small individual effect of each wonder (as opposed to their substantial combined effect of many of them) tends to dilute out one artist wonder among several priest/engineer wonders. And there's nothing wrong with priests. Put a couple as permanent residents in a shrine city with wall street and you are rich.

First, whipping anywhere is hugely powerful, and especially so in a GPF. It's a hugely better way to produce stuff than using hammers in a high-food city. So not whipping the GPF is just bad. And while I also won't directly whip wonders (since they cost twice as much), I WILL use whip overflow to build them, which works very well.

Second, "whipping to control unhealth" is a bad idea in its own right because you don't need to worry about controlling it like you do happiness. Going unhealthy really doesn't hurt anything. Stopping growth to avoid unhealth is just pointless. Completely.

Overflow whip?! Please. As I understand a whip is 20 hammers (correct me if I'm wrong). You overflow whip for 19. That's 2 turns of production in a city with a forge and two plains hills being worked. Big deal. Further, you've not only killed your people, but you've made them angry as well. 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?). If you add any unhapiness to the fact that your city is unhealthy and inefficient (which will hit you even harder without 33 population to work all 20 squares of your hypotheical food squares), you really won't have very many specialists in your ideal city. Once again, you used an extreme and ideal situation to illustrate a realistic dillema, which isn't very useful.

In summary, you'll never get to 33 people to work this extensively-flood plained city because unhealthiness will prevent it from growing, especially if you want a forge and perhaps an IW there. Unless of course you have every food resource, but if you have all of those, then you're probably owning so much of the world that you'll win without a huge GP farm (yes, I'm taking trade into account on that statement; to get a surplus of resources high enough to trade for everything still requires controlling much of the globe). If you push it to grow despite unhapiness, you are probably working everyone in food tiles anyway, so no specialists and no production, which isn't much of a GP farm. I'd prefer a more balanced city.

If you actually had the least tiny bit of a case, it would have been harder.

Right back at you sweetheart; I look forward to your response.

I edited this post around 1:30 to say things that I had originally put in but were missing for some reason; I suspect a poor connection.

 

[podraza]

It seems that my question was really just a specific version of an epic battle yet to be fully sorted out.

Do we agree, however, that the analysis is different on account of this being the capital? Bureauracy? That means prefer Cottage over Farms in this instance. Because it will double your commerce but not your food.

That's what I did anyway. I built 1 farm and the rest cottage.

 

[Wodan]

It seems that my question was really just a specific version of an epic battle yet to be fully sorted out.

Do we agree, however, that the analysis is different on account of this being the capital? Bureauracy? That means prefer Cottage over Farms in this instance. Because it will double your commerce but not your food.

That's what I did anyway. I built 1 farm and the rest cottage.

You did right.

Wodan

 

[Landmonitor]

It seems that my question was really just a specific version of an epic battle yet to be fully sorted out.

Do we agree, however, that the analysis is different on account of this being the capital? Bureauracy? That means prefer Cottage over Farms in this instance. Because it will double your commerce but not your food.

That's what I did anyway. I built 1 farm and the rest cottage.

Hahaha! I had no idea how much this thread would end up making me think about this either.

I think Bureaucracy will definetely benefit more if you cottage the city, and I likely would have done the same, considering that you are financial. When I said that 7 floodplains wasn't too many for a good GP farm, and that I would farm it, I forgot that you were financial.

About bureaucracy being maximized by making a capital a commerce city - I have had many games where my capital was a GP farm but I ran beauracracy anyway, but this was, and this probably won't surprise you if I read my other posts, because I like building wonders in my GP farm, and bureaucracy certainly advances that interest.

So to get the most out of bureaucracy, your capital should be a commerce city, but to get the most out of a GP farm capital, you should still run bureaucracy in order to build wonders faster. Your trade routes generate commerce (as opposed to gold) so they will benefit from bureaucracy too, and your best ones will probably be in your capital if you're running this civic, so even with a GP farm, you're not totally missing out on the increased commerce aspect of this civic either.

Having said all that, early in the game, this civic slot is going to be either bureaucracy or vassalage anyway, so unless you're at war, you may as well run this even if it's just for the production.

Hope that helps.

 

[Beamup]

this assumption is defeating the purpose on demontration.
This is very level dependant, but I have seen situation where my jungle/floodplains city was unhealthy right from the start = losing food.
You can still grow and overcome the health cap by working farmed flooplains for a start.
Still, it's a pain, and you better take the unhealthiness into account.

That assumption is the worst-case for the FP city, other than the special case (as I mentioned before, and you point out again) that the unhealth is so bad you can't grow to wortk them.

This is an idealistic situation. A city with a population of 33 (for the 13 spealist example) will always have health problems apart from the FPs(unless you are accessing every food resource and/or are on a very low difficulty). Thus, you won't be able to grow enough to work all those squares to gain all those specialists anyway. I'm considering a more realistic situation here.

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.

The idea is to work the hill temporarily while building wonders and resume specialist after. If you are spiritualistic and post-philosopy you can alternate between OR/Pacifism to really optimise this approach.

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

Also, imaging a realistic scenario without a ton of cities; it would be folly to try building units in your GP farm, since you need buildings to make non-caste system specialists and since you to take % advantage of the scientists and merchants. So you need to build units elsewhere (in an early game empire with few cities) ergo, your wonders should be in the GP farm where they will help make GPs.

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.

Early wonders are rich in Engineer GPP producing wonders, all the more reason to build them (do we need to debate that engineers are the best GPs?...). This in turn leads to even more wonders since once you build a forge in a GW/HG, and dare I say... pyramids (if you're lucky) city, you'll be hammering out engineers like crazy (I've had a surplus of three of them on Monarch before using this approach).

"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.

Further, you specialize your output by not building too many marble wonders (which does suck if you have lots of marble, but if that's the case... you can just go for a culture victory). I'm not saying that you should let resources dictate your purchases, but you'd be foolish to ignore them. And at any rate, the small individual effect of each wonder (as opposed to their substantial combined effect of many of them) tends to dilute out one artist wonder among several priest/engineer wonders. And there's nothing wrong with priests. Put a couple as permanent residents in a shrine city with wall street and you are rich.

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

Overflow whip?! Please. As I understand a whip is 20 hammers (correct me if I'm wrong). You overflow whip for 19. That's 2 turns of production in a city with a forge and two plains hills being worked. Big deal. Further, you've not only killed your people, but you've made them angry as well.

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.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Well, here we go. I have to say I'm enjoying this.

Overflow whip?! Please. As I understand a whip is 20 hammers (correct me if I'm wrong). You overflow whip for 19. That's 2 turns of production in a city with a forge and two plains hills being worked. Big deal. Further, you've not only killed your people, but you've made them angry as well. And I think this is a good p

Your understanding is flawed.

1) On normal speed, one pop whipped produces 30 hammers, base. Multipliers like the forge come on top of that, so you need to be careful that you compare apples to apples.

2) Your GP farm can grow back one pop per turn (the magic of the granary), as a rule (you don't want it always doing that - it means running the food tiles instead of the specialists - but the capacity is there) which means that in given periods you can be basically running at 30 base hammers per turn... if you can deal with the unhappies.

This is so powerful that it's worth considering using your floodplains for a military city instead of a GP Farm. High food plus whip plus Heroic Epic equals a production city worth 60 hammers per turn, not including the hammer from the city, forge bonuses, or any mines you are able to work while whipping.

3) Hereditary Rule means that you can rush military units, and leave them in the city until the opressed citizens forgive the incident. If you have the Globe Theatre, then the citizens are too busy to notice ("other than that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln?"). If neither of those is available, you've got the culture slider. The happiness can be managed.

Note that Globe Theatre plus Heroic Epic plus floodplains turns the city into a production powerhouse generating 135+ hammer units every other turn, even if no other production is available. (for example, you've got Cavalry every other turn, with overflow). I've decided that this demonstrates that the Globe Theatre is implemented incorrectly, and should be filed away as an exploit - you are welcome to reach other conclusions.

4) So the true rhythm is
turn 1: start 30-60 hammer military unit
turn 2: rush unit
turn 3: apply overflow to desired build

because of a bug in vanilla civ 1.61, you don't get penalized for whipping a unit from scratch; so turn 1 isn't necessary. You can just rock back and forth between whips and overflows.

Depending on the builds, and the overflow, you might be able to carry the overflow (so whip two units, and then apply the combined overflow to the desired build). You can also play games where you whip multiple units on the same turn (queue management), then grow everything back - this converts food to hammers more efficiently, but the management of it requires a bit more care.

 

[UncleJJ]

Do we agree, however, that the analysis is different on account of this being the capital? Bureauracy? That means prefer Cottage over Farms in this instance. Because it will double your commerce but not your food.

This is not right.

Firstly, Bureaucracy adds a 50% bonus to commerce and to hammer production (and not double as you say). Secondly, the bonus to hammers includes those from slavery, so in that sense the farms also get a 50% bonus to food used for growth. The food used to support specialists is not affected by the Bureaucracy bonus so it will only affect the hammers from Engineers and Priests with other specialists getting no benefit.

 

[Wodan]

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?

Wodan

EDIT: I've done Globe whipping/drafting, but not using the overflow like this. It just sounds like VOU is saying building the wonder is the bigger benefit, but the numbers aren't working out from what I can tell. Oh, it's nice having the capability to build a wonder in my GP farm, but it seems like I'm going to lose any wonder build race even doing this. Given a choice between trying and probably not making it, I'd rather just build the wonder in a production city. Unless the only reason I want the wonder is for the GPP points, like Chichen Itza (which I find pretty useless unless I want great prophet GPP).