When to use slavery?

[Andrei_V]

The 'speed' of my tactic is heavily dependent on food available for growth. A single 4F tile is definitely not the best. With an irrigated Corn or on floodplains it would work better, of course.

With a single 3F tile for growth the conventional 'get BW, then chop-chop-chop' tactic would work better. You'd just get the second city where you can whip faster.

I do agree that sometimes it makes more sense to rush the Settler first, then Granary. The rest is essentially the same - get Pottery for cottages and Granaries and let the city grow over cottages, then BW for whipping and chopping. Build cottages first, then chop/whip.

The difference between 1) stagnate the city at size 2 for a Settler, and 2) let it grow until 4, then stagnate for Settler, then whip, should be obvious. Even without Granary you basically convert the same food to hammers for Settler in both cases, only in the second one you work more profitable tiles most of the time. Like a double benefit from the same food - you use it first for growth, then for hammers.

Having Granary makes this benefit unbeatable.

 

[Araqiel]

I wonder though is your tactic any faster than normal building of a settler even in a massive food start? Remember food leads to faster growth but its also leads to faster settler production.

My test game start previously was flood plains, wheat, and 3 gold plains hills. In that start there was a 6 turn difference as well. Which was consistent with the low food start as well. I'll experiment in the afternoon I guess.

Btw I let my city grow to size three before I build my settler. (typically unless I have two very good resources that I can improve immediately) Gives you time to improve two tiles and prechop a bit. As well as get two warriors out.

Indeed your way would be strictly superior, if it gave you a true speed advantage. As it is though its still up in the air. I think it might be better to hybridize it, at least in certain conditions. Whiping the second and subsequent settlers while building the first on your own. Again I must experiment.

 

[Andrei_V]

What sort of 'faster' tactic are you talking about?

I work 1st cottage all the time from early on, when at size 2. I work 2nd cottage most of the time at size 3. I work the 3rd one from time to time at size 4. They grow into hamlets-villages earlier. If you count the extra commerce they generate properly, you'll find that those 'few coins' are roughly equivalent to a Gold mine.

So, I work a Gold mine for 10 turns or so more. If you indeed found your 2nd city near a Gold mine 6 turns earlier, you'll level off 6 turns of difference. But if you're still 4 turns behind, it just means, that you would be 10 turns behind tech wise without Gold.

You maybe ahead in number of Workers, improved tiles, even cities. You can never catch me with my 10 turns lead. Simply because you have a happiness cap, maintenance costs, whatever. On Emporer+ when your new cities have happiness cap at 3, you cannot even use the whip to the full extent.

I'll just get Monarchy (or Religion, Calendar, whatever) 10 turns earlier, and run my cities at increased cap all that time. The tech lead is directly convertable to production/commerce.

Take it into account when talking about 'mathematical inferiority'.

Fast early expansion is not so profitable as one can think. You're typically better off when you expand having proper civics/techs and some commerce already, and just use your available resources in a most efficient way. That means, Granary early. Maybe not before the first Settler, but still.

 

[Araqiel]

You maybe ahead in number of Workers, improved tiles, even cities. You can never catch me with my 10 turns lead. Simply because you have a happiness cap, maintenance costs, whatever. On Emporer+ when your new cities have happiness cap at 3, you cannot even use the whip to the full extent.

That is patently unproven and you know it. As a matter of it fact it is likely not true. Your "ten turns" balances on the razors edge of a mere 2/3 more developed cottages. A 1 to 2 tech lead is NOT necessarily self-catalytic. In the end you final research potential is determined by how much land and what quality it is.

I'd also like to add that you selected a financial civilization to pull your number from. We also got a start on a river as well. Thats something you should think about. In less ideal circumstances you could not gain so large a lead technology wise.

Take it into account when talking about 'mathematical inferiority'.

I am looking at taking all the factors you mention into account.

Fast early expansion is not so profitable as one can think. You're typically better off when you expand having proper civics/techs and some commerce already, and just use your available resources in a most efficient way. That means, Granary early. Maybe not before the first Settler, but still.

This is only true at when you start running into maintence costs which are signifigant. We're talking about the first two to four cities. So its not all that relevant, unless you're building one farther than usual for a strategic purpose. You tout your early CoL but beyond founding the religion, a three city empire doesn't need courthouses. Caste system can be nice, but not if you're using the whip extensively.

The connection you draw with early granary and early science (which is now the advantage you tout) which isn't true. Its prioritization of cottages that leads to it to be more exact.

 

[Andrei_V]

You don't need courthouses. You need to increase your happiness cap. +2(3) happy in 3 cities is a lot better than 1 more city that early. It not only allows you to run more cottages, but to use whip a lot more efficiently. You'll build and develop your 4th (5th) city earlier, and with less problems, like maintenance or happiness. Just build some farms, wait and whip as usual. Meanwhile develop more cottages in your core cities to pay maintenance.

 

[Andrei_V]

The connection you draw with early granary and early science (which is now the advantage you tout) which isn't true. Its prioritization of cottages that leads to it to be more exact.

Ugh. Using the available food in a more efficient way (Granary included) allows you to work more cottages. Otherwise, you'd have to use mines or more food for production, instead of cottages. Get it?

Of course, you can work farms/mines instead of cottages all that time, if you want more production, and don't care about commerce. A 4F tile (farm on floodplains) is a lot better production tile than 1F3H mine, even without Granary, since you can recycle the food in the above described manner.

So, if you want variations of this tactic, here you go:

- build 4 farms/mines prior to chopping.
- wait until size 4 (on lower levels, 6. You need more farms, of course.)
- set to Settler, wait until you can whip, and whip. If your worker has nothing else to do, chop a forest. Use queue swapping to keep the city growing.
- rush Granary as soon as you have the tech to get 2.x:1 food-to-hammer conversion ratio
- repeat growth-whip cycle as soon as your happiness allows.

 

[cabert]

Hmm, this raises a new confusion. How can you increase the progress of "several" items? I understand if the chop can finish off a build and there are extra hammers left over then they carry over to the next item. But they would only carry over to, say, the third item if the second build item was also completed in that same one turn. This is what you mean, correct?

you can increase it to 100% by whipping then switch to another building in the queue whip it too, ...

All those buildings/units are "ready to be built", but no overflow is yet applied (however, the pop is gone ).
So at the end of turn 1, you finish building 1 (say a granary).
At the beginning of turn 2 you switch to a not yet started building (say, a temple) and apply overflow. (you may finish it, if spiritual and city has high production but that's no sure at all).
Turn 3, select next "ready to be built" item (say a theatre).
At the beginning of turn 4, select back turn 2 building (the temple) and apply overflow.
If done well (prechopping the granary and the theatre) you have at the end of turn 4 after revolt built 3 items, for the cost of 2 to 4 pop (and have 17 more turns of +2 unhappiness, balanced by a theatre and a temple).
You need to "work" one turn to apply overflow.
It's dangerous to let the "ready to be built" buildings finish one after the other because if you have more cumulated overflow than the cost of the last building you waste hammers.
That's why I finish the less costly buildings first (granary before theatre is for an expansive civ, a creative civ would go theater first) and i look at the going to be overflow before hitting enter.
If it's going to waste hammers (silly figures, but to give an idea : 22 overflow for granary, 32 overflow for theatre, one after the other would give 54 overflow, capped at 50)

 

[ronnybiggs]

Strat 2. BW first, chop 3 forests for the first Settler, then whip. Then whip another Worker.

Tech path: Hunting -> BW -> The Wheel -> Pottery -> Mysticism -> Agriculture -> AH -> Writing -> Polytheism -> Priesthood -> Code of Laws.

I like getting the first worker out to coincide with BW. But I would even put off Wheel and Pottery for a bit later. Ancient roads suck for transportation, and you'll only need roads for spreading resources once your cities are grown enough to need them. As for pottery, you'll only need to build cottages after your cities are working all the resource tiles you've improved. Though if you've got a city on a flood plain, you'll want cottages in those tiles ASAP.

I'm assuming you're picking Polytheism to get Priesthood. I go with Meditation instead for the Monastery improvement. Nice option to have to get early culture in border cities if I need it. And unless you love the Parthenon, Polytheism doesn't do much for you at this stage.

 

[Andrei_V]

Ancient roads suck for transportation, and you'll only need roads for spreading resources once your cities are grown enough to need them.

Roads are essential for defense. They allow you to keep less units. A single Chariot in each city would do, provided that you can quickly move another one from neighbor city as backup.

As for pottery, you'll only need to build cottages after your cities are working all the resource tiles you've improved.

I'm not sure how about you, but I need Pottery ASAP, for both Granary and early cottages. Especially important on higher levels (Emperor, Immortal) when I have little or no chances for wonders, religions, slingshots, etc. Then I'd go for Monarchy and Construction (both kinda expensive techs at this stage) right after BW-IW, Writing, and a few Worker techs.

Monarchy is essential if I whip units instead of building them, since every new unit increases happiness, compensating for "cruel oppression" penalty.

So, I just whip enough of them, going sometimes to +5-6 unhappy, but keeping city pop high enough (6-8, depending on the health cap). Finally, I whip the last 1 or 2 units to drop the pop to 3-4 and stagnate at this level, working cottages only, since I need some $$$ to support an army and captured cities. It's essential to have a few grown up cottages (villages - towns) at this point.

The army leaves the city (it no longer needs many units for happiness), and goes for conquest.

I'm assuming you're picking Polytheism to get Priesthood. I go with Meditation instead for the Monastery improvement.

Utterly irrelevant if I don't have a religion. Meditation is a little bit less expensive, and precisely for this reason I'd pick it up frequently on the way to Priesthood -> Monarchy.

On lower levels, if I have a religion (or at least a chance to get one), I always go for Polytheism, since it opens way to both Monotheism (Org Religion for +25 building bonus and Missionaries without Monasteries) and Literature (GL, NE, HE), which are a lot more useful techs at this stage than Philosophy, which I only need when I am ready to go for Liberalism.

Besides, it's easy to trade Polytheism for Meditation, but not vice versa.

 

[ronnybiggs]

Good points, Andrei. I'm still experimenting with this opening strategy myself. I'm just learning that that early worker really is crucial.

As for an early religion, do you try for a CoL slingshot to grab confucianism or is that out of the question for Emperor+ levels? I find that at that point in the game I'm really ripe for a religion, and CoL is available and expensive. I manage to do this rather consistently on Monarch.

 

[ronnybiggs]

Roads are essential for defense. They allow you to keep less units. A single Chariot in each city would do, provided that you can quickly move another one from neighbor city as backup.

I'm not sure how about you, but I need Pottery ASAP, for both Granary and early cottages. Especially important on higher levels (Emperor, Immortal) when I have little or no chances for wonders, religions, slingshots, etc. Then I'd go for Monarchy and Construction (both kinda expensive techs at this stage) right after BW-IW, Writing, and a few Worker techs.

The problem with roads is at that stage I'm more interested in just getting the resource tiles developed. The empire's small enough where I can move units to meet threats in time without roads. Ultimately, though, we're not at that much of a disagreement, because you need roads for Pottery, and we agree that's critical at least for cottages.

As for building granaries, I don't usually build those until a bit later when my cities can handle pop growth. Keep in mind I'm talking really early in the game when I'm just trying to grab land with new cities, so the main focus is churning out settlers and defensive units ASAP. I'd rather have two cities without granaries than one city with.

 

[Araqiel]

Roads are essential for defense. They allow you to keep less units. A single Chariot in each city would do, provided that you can quickly move another one from neighbor city as backup.

Absolutely and unless there are more barbarian spearmen spawning in Warlords you'll only need chariots for anti-barb duty.

Chariots now get +100% against axemen. Making them the perfect barb supression unit.

 

[ronnybiggs]

Chariots now get +100% against axemen. Making them the perfect barb supression unit.

Is this in warlords or just the latest patch? Vs. just axemen or all melee? It's the first time I heard of this.

 

[Andrei_V]

As for an early religion, do you try for a CoL slingshot to grab confucianism or is that out of the question for Emperor+ levels? I find that at that point in the game I'm really ripe for a religion, and CoL is available and expensive. I manage to do this rather consistently on Monarch.

On Monarch I can get the straight CS Slingshot quite consistently.

On Emporer it's a sort of a gamble, and a very dangerous one. Chances are you can grab Confucianism, but in several attempts I made specifically to test this, I failed in most cases. I tried with Oracle, too, but it's still highly problematic.

Another possibility is to use a GS towards Philosophy, and grab Taoism. You still need to research through CoL (this time you need Meditation, not Polytheism), and Math. But the risk is still high.

Now if you did fail, you just spent a lot of time on researching completely useless techs. Monarchy gives you an instant boost to happiness, that is, a possibility to start whipping your axes like crazy, and it is 100% sure.

So, you whip axes while researching Construction, and after that you only need to whip a few cats as well, and start conquering the world. Meanwhile you can research CoL, then CS in a normal way.

I tend to skip Alphabet completely (the AIs frequently offer to trade it to me for, to say, Construction). Now even if you research CS very slowly, you'll be typically one of the first to it, so you can trade for a lot of other techs, like Metal Casting, Literature, Drama, etc.

Then head for Machinery, upgrade your Axes to Maces (Samurais), and keep going. By that time you'd typically set up a GP farm, so after CS-Machinery, research Paper, then burn one GS towards Education, another one - towards Printing Press, and you're now close to Rifling.

 

[Araqiel]

Is this in warlords or just the latest patch? Vs. just axemen or all melee? It's the first time I heard of this.

Dunno I'll start up a vanilla civ game and see if it applies to normal civ as well. But it came from the expansion so I don't think it will apply to non-warlord games.

Its only axemen.

Edit: Its only for people who are playing warlords. Still a huge change for early war.

 

[Andrei_V]

The problem with roads is at that stage I'm more interested in just getting the resource tiles developed.

Now suppose you have a city without any roads around, and there are two barb Archers approaching from opposite directions.

How many Archers/Axes do you think you need not only to defend this city, but to protect a few improved tiles (mines or farms) around?

How many Chariots do you think you need for the same job, provided that you have some roads, and a Chariot can manage to intercept the second barb after killing the first one?

 

[ronnybiggs]

Now suppose you have a city without any roads around, and there are two barb Archers approaching from opposite directions.

How many Archers/Axes do you think you need not only to defend this city, but to protect a few improved tiles (mines or farms) around?

How many Chariots do you think you need for the same job, provided that you have some roads, and a Chariot can manage to intercept the second barb after killing the first one?

That's a big if. First, generally I build my empire against a coast or towards a coast so that at least one corner is covered and I don't have the issue of two archers from opposite directions. Second, at the stage we're talking about, archers barely make themselves known. Third, roads only make people move twice as fast, and if you have a chariot, you're already moving twice as fast towards any archers you see. And that's only if you follow the roads, which unless you're wasting your workers building them instead of other improvements, you don't have that many.

What I'm getting at is, if an archer manages to pillage a square or two, so be it. Risking having to re-build an improvement is fewer turns lost than getting a bunch of roads out first.

At any rate, I'm really talking about the stage where you're still leaving your city undefended and exploring with your warrior. Perhaps when I play Emperor the dynamics are different and it's really important to pop out a chariot in the first 30-40 turns. But at monarch, getting workers cranking out farms and pastures does a hell of a lot more than building roads for city growth, settler prod, and whipping. Which means AH/Agri/BW first, then wheel/pottery, then the mystic techs.

 

[ronnybiggs]

Andrei, I guess I should ask one key question. Do you bother defending your cities with a regular archery/warrior unit each? Or do you just have a chariot run back and forth protecting two or more cities?

 

[Andrei_V]

That's a big if.

It sure is. But if you are against a coast, you don't need any defenders except a single Warrior in the first place.

In the example I presented above, I had to repel a few barb Archer attacks. It was Prince level.

Now, think of this: if you can defend with lesser number of less expensive units, you can invest the hammers you save into building more Workers, can't you.

With roads around the city, the Chariot can exit the city, attack, and retreat to the city on the same turn. On the next turn it gets promoted (healed some damage), exits the city, goes 2-3 tiles using roads, and attacks again. Or something like that. Try it for yourself once.

As for the Granaries, I thought I explained their benefits already. With Granaries+Slavery you can make about twice as more hammers from a 4F tile, than from 1F3H or 4H mine.

It just makes your whole production capacity a lot more efficient.

 

[Andrei_V]

Andrei, I guess I should ask one key question. Do you bother defending your cities with a regular archery/warrior unit each? Or do you just have a chariot run back and forth protecting two or more cities?

I rarely if ever bother with Archery in the first place. I'd build a Warrior, and a Chariot per each early city, then replace Warriors by Axes eventually, when I have developed enough economy.

Or if the cities are in deep rear, I would not even bother with upgrades.

Sometimes I upgrade a couple of veteran Chariots to Horse Archers, then Knights, then Cavalry, just to protect my cities next to Arctic zone, where the barbs keep coming throughout the game.

Another good use of Chariots is that they make a perfect Settler escort. They just march together to the new city spot, the Settler founds the city, the Chariot stays for a Garrison. The Chariots are as cheap as Archers, 25 hammers.