What's the strategy for whipping the moai statues in a one hammer city?

[guermantes]

Hi,
I read in a thread a long time ago about someone having watched sullla on youtube basically building the moai statues from whip overflow in a 1 city.
I have been trying to find it but can't.

Is there a strategy for doing this? What should I whip and how do I calculate which whip gives me the best overflow? I never seem to understand this.

Here is a screen of the city in question as well as a save if that can help anyone:

Thanks!

 

[lymond]

Well you just need to learn about whip and OF mechanics. Once you know that it's easy. Here's a link to several write-ups I did on the subject:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11671673&postcount=11

By the way, that is a horrible city for Maoi. It is not a 1 hammer city. And it is definitely not a place you want to build cottages unless it is just a helper city for another commerce city. Should be farmed to irrigate rice. Sounds like you have lot to learn just from looking at the screenshot.

 

[guermantes]

Thanks. I'll have a look at that thread.
As regards the irrigation, I just hit Civil Service and haven't gotten the worker down there to transfer the town into a farm.
Why is it a horrible city for Moai? I thought plenty of seatiles (and having build the colossus elsewhere) would make it a great candidate. Would you mind elaborating?

 

[jerVL/kg]

Ocean tiles are almost never worth working. Financial + Colossus does make them semi-worthwhile, but remember that Colossus will eventually obsolete, likely before your city grows to work the ocean tiles anyway.

I agree with lymond that your city is very badly placed. Founding it 1NW would have auto-irrigated the rice, added +2 health, and allowed the city to borrow at least two grassland mines if only temporarily to get MS built. Even so, you shouldn't necessarily build MS in a city just because it has 14+ water tiles; the wonder has much better synergy in, say, a strong production city with 8-10 coastal tiles (or even better, a large freshwater lake!) And it's generally a bad idea to build it in a low-food city, especially one with no seafood.

But it's really hard to say for sure, unless you can post a map of the rest of your empire?

 

[pigswill]

Tiwanku looks a better Moia candidate, Moia fits fairly well with a coastal HE city, later in the game you can build a dockyard there as well.

 

[pomthom]

Thanks. I'll have a look at that thread.
As regards the irrigation, I just hit Civil Service and haven't gotten the worker down there to transfer the town into a farm.
Why is it a horrible city for Moai? I thought plenty of seatiles (and having build the colossus elsewhere) would make it a great candidate. Would you mind elaborating?

It just makes the city a bit better, while if you build Moai in a coastal city that has good land production and some food, it becomes a very good city. You can't leverage Moai in a city like this, and it'll be tedious to build.

It's true that city is not ideally placed but it's probably a backfill city si I don't blame that.

 

[Gwynnja]

You don't just need more hammers, you need more food. I don't understand why you would settle such a junker city in the first place.

 

[pomthom]

You don't just need more hammers, you need more food. I don't understand why you would settle such a junker city in the first place.

If I've settled everything else I'll eventually settle it too, it's still a city

 

[CivNoobie]

Hi, this is what you can do...irrigate the rice, work on the 2 gold tiles that give 1 hammer each...whip out a forge then assign a specialists to it.

then unwork some seatiles that gives you a bonus hammer for each citizen, you now have about 7-8 hammers.

 

[RagingHordes]

It is true that guermantes simply needs to understand the mechanics of whips and OF.

Spoiler :

They are very simple actually. A whip gives you a certain amount of hammers for a certain amount of food.
Unfortunately, you cannot use the whip to partially add hammers to a build (the Moai in your case). However, you can use the whip to add more hammers to a finishing build, therefore creating an overflow. The overflow can be directed towards the Moai.

It is also true that the city in his pic is not a good city for the Moai.

Spoiler :

The Moai adds hammers to a city. Think in terms of specialization. You want to add hammers to a city that already is focusing on hammers. For instance if your capitol is coastal and has some mines, then Moai can be very strong. It provides the water tiles with a hammer that can be boosted both by Bureaucracy and in a Golden Age.
In any case, hammer heavy coastal cities benefit most from Moai.

It is not true that the city is poor or that the tiles being worked are not worth working.

Spoiler :

Granted, it is not the most awesomely stellar city in the world. But it is a good, solid city, bringing some production via the whip and actually benefiting the treasury of the empire. A typical city specialized in commerce. I would love to work the other coastal tiles and it will be pretty strong after the Colossus obsoletes (if the game is not over by then, with the awesome economy being run right now.)

 

[RagingHordes]

Oh, and guermantes, please consider not farming over any of the cottages. Your city does not need to grow any faster and it should not be a whip city. It should be the commerce heavy city that it is and it's already doing a great job.

If anything, consider switching from working the Rice, to working a Coastal tile. You are growing fast enough as it is.

Edit: Btw, CivNoobie, great troll advice!
So bad, it shows what is right by contrast!

 

[CivNoobie]

Oh, and guermantes, please consider not farming over any of the cottages. Your city does not need to grow any faster and it should not be a whip city. It should be the commerce heavy city that it is and it's already doing a great job.

If anything, consider switching from working the Rice, to working a Coastal tile. You are growing fast enough as it is.

Edit: Btw, CivNoobie, great troll advice!
So bad, it shows what is right by contrast!

He asked for the quickest way to finish the moai stature, not for the best way to generate the most commerce

in fact, he should be beelining for astronomy right now to open border with other civs so he can benefit from trade route bonuses from free market + corporation + harbors + custom house + ocean trade route multipliers

since a seatile is worth 3 gold, he can generate as much as 10 x 3 commerce from seatiles + 8 x 4 commerce from trade routes post-astronomy = 60+ from that moai stature city alone + decent production. He's got enough commerce in his other cities.

And why is he fighting hannibal?

 

[RagingHordes]

"He asked for the quickest way to finish the moai stature, not for the best way to generate the most commerce"

Sure, I'm not saying your advice didn't answer his question, I'm saying that the optimal way for building Moai in a commerce city shows that you can't make a parrot out of a kitty. Love the kitty, guermantes!

 

[Gwynnja]

If I've settled everything else I'll eventually settle it too, it's still a city

There's really no rule saying you need to occupy every tile. But if you'd settled one tile north of the rice, you'd have a pretty decent production city instead of a bunch of junk water tiles.

 

[Seraiel]

"He asked for the quickest way to finish the moai stature, not for the best way to generate the most commerce"

Sure, I'm not saying your advice didn't answer his question, I'm saying that the optimal way for building Moai in a commerce city shows that you can't make a parrot out of a kitty. Love the kitty, guermantes!

Kittens are evil RaginHordes! They plan to invade earth and destroy all men. Proof for this lies in the Southpark episode 16x3.

On a serious note though:

The answer to building MOAI fastest btw. was already given with the link to Slavery-mechanics and I personally don't see why that city should be bad for MOAI. I'd also advise to work the Food non-stop to use exactly those mechanics (hint: Overflow) .

 

[barbertje]

There's really no rule saying you need to occupy every tile. But if you'd settled one tile north of the rice, you'd have a pretty decent production city instead of a bunch of junk water tiles.

but that tile is 2 tiles away from Cuzco, so you can't settle there. It doesn't seem likely that this could have been foreseen when placing the capital.

 

[pomthom]

There's really no rule saying you need to occupy every tile. But if you'd settled one tile north of the rice, you'd have a pretty decent production city instead of a bunch of junk water tiles.

I was of course assuming that you can't settle 2 tiles away from another inland city

To me this is clearly a backfill city that you settle late because a city 3 tiles away from capitole is always better than no extra city at all. It's weak but it still has a 5 tile if it's irrigated lol.

I'm not trying to make an argument against the fact that the city is weak or is not a good candidate for Moai, just that it's not ridiculous to have settled it

 

[guermantes]

And why is he fighting hannibal?

There is some good advice in this thread but also some assertions that may have been too hastily written down. Be that as it may, obviously, as have been pointed out, it is a backfill city dependent on the original placement of Cuzco, and with or without Moai, I fail to see how it hurts my empire or deserves being described as "bunch of junk water tiles".

But what I really don't understand is the comment about my war with Hannibal. Why wouldn't I be fighting Hannibal? What do I have to gain from leaving him at the same strength as I, competing for land and happy resources? We were alone on the continent with some barbs, and thanks to my war with him I am now alone busy settling the rest of the island in my own pace and already well ahead of the other AI on the other continent. Barring Apostolic Palace on the other continent, I think I have this game in the bag. I think I did pretty well bringing that war to Hannibal. My turn to be confused, I guess...

 

[pomthom]

But what I really don't understand is the comment about my war with Hannibal. Why wouldn't I be fighting Hannibal? What do I have to gain from leaving him at the same strength as I, competing for land and happy resources? We were alone on the continent with some barbs, and thanks to my war with him I am now alone busy settling the rest of the island in my own pace and already well ahead of the other AI on the other continent. Barring Apostolic Palace on the other continent, I think I have this game in the bag. I think I did pretty well bringing that war to Hannibal. My turn to be confused, I guess...

Of course you should. You can't use him in any other way and have a crushing tech advantage. And you should wipe him out completely IMO.

Concerning your Moai city, independent of the fact of whether it's the right place for Moai or not I think you should forget about it. The production of the city won't be enough, even with whip OF, especially without Stone. I think you'd be better off just whipping units from there.

I'd irrigate the Rice this way if I were you:



You should also switch the 5 tile 1N of Rice back to Cuzco because it has very significant and multipliers (Bureaucracy bonus, an Academy, a Library...) so you'll leverage the tile's yield much more effectively. For the same reasons maybe you should on the contrary cottage this tile :

 

[guermantes]

Very good points, and thanks for taking the effort to present them visually!
I tend to overlook switching tiles between cities a bit too often. And I probably would have sacrificed the town for irrigation otherwise. (BTW, Hannibal is no more.)